Name: Green Beans for Winter
Ingredients: green corn beans; coarse sea salt; weak salt water; spare ribs or other pork

Why it works: Corn and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,211 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Green Beans for Winter

Ingredients

green corn beans
coarse sea salt
weak salt water
spare ribs or other pork

Directions

Split the green corn beans lengthwise.
Drop them into boiling water and cook until tender.
Drain the beans thoroughly.
Layer the beans in a crock, adding salt to taste and mashing with a potato masher.
Repeat layering and mashing until all beans are used.
Place a cloth and weight on top, then cover with weak salt water.
Cleanse occasionally like sauerkraut.
When ready to use, cook for two hours with spare ribs or other pork.

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.

Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Corn + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,069 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

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