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Bean Salad

A salad of boiled green beans mixed with sugar, onion, cucumber, parsley, salt, and served with mayonnaise or French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Green beans and cucumber share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the green beans.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water until tender, then drain.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add sugar, chopped onion, cucumber, parsley, and more salt if needed.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise or French dressing.

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. Green beans + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Green beans + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

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 salad and supply its texture once cooked until tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and the sharpness of the dressing.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor to the salad.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture.

The step that matters

Boil the beans in salted water until tender, then drain.. Beans cooked only briefly stay raw-tasting and squeaky, while overcooking makes them limp and dull in color. Salting the water seasons the beans as they cook, so the salad does not taste bland.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green beans, sugar, onion, cucumber):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, sugar, onion, cucumber. 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 bean salad recipes

String 29Green 19French 11Kidney 11White 11Lima 6 See all 45 →

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