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String Beans

A boiled string bean dish seasoned with salt, baking soda, butter, flour, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the string beans in salted water for about 30 minutes.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and add ½ cup coarse sea salt and 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the soaked beans and boil until tender.

  2. Before serving, stir in 1 tablespoon butter mixed with 2 tablespoons flour and ½ pint heavy cream.

  3. Season with pepper to taste.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
The main vegetable, which softens and becomes tender as it boils.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, which helps the beans soften faster and keep a bright green colour.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a creamy coating.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream with the butter, giving a smoother, heavier sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the beans in baking soda water. Baking soda softens the beans quickly, so they can turn mushy or lose shape if boiled too long. Test for tenderness often and drain as soon as they are done.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, pepper):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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.

More string beans recipes

Canned 17Pickled 11Creamed 9Boiled 6French 5German 3 See all 97 →

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