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Bean Pickles

Pickled green beans seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Bean Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick young and tender green beans and string them.

  2. Boil the beans in a kettle with salt until they can be pierced with a fork.

  3. Drain the beans well through a colander.

Pickle

  1. Place the beans in a stone jar.

  2. Sprinkle with ground black pepper and cover with strong cider vinegar.

  3. Add sugar if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Green beans + cidertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Form the main body of the pickle and give it a crisp, tender bite.
Strong cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickled beans their tang and helps preserve them.
Sugar
Optional sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil until pierced, not until soft. Boiling too long breaks down the cell walls in green beans, leaving them soft and mushy. Stopping once a fork pierces the beans keeps them tender but still firm, so they hold their texture after soaking in the vinegar.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cider, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cider, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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