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Green String Beans Oriental

A sauté of green beans, onions, tomatoes, and egg seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Green beans and tomato work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green String Beans Oriental

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. String and cut the green beans lengthwise.

  2. Cook the beans in salted water until tender.

Make the onion mixture

  1. Finely chop the onions and fry them in butter.

  2. Season the onions with salt and pepper, then add the tomatoes.

  3. Combine the onion mixture with the beans and cook for about 10 minutes.

Finish with egg

  1. Make a nest in the center of the beans and pour in the beaten egg.

  2. Once the egg is cooked, stir it through the beans.

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 + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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 dish and provide the tender, vegetable texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth when fried slowly in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying the onions, helping them brown and soften.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture and acidity that brightens the onion and bean mixture.
Egg
Sets when cooked in the beans, binding the dish and adding richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg through the beans. The beaten egg must be cooked in the hot bean mixture until set. Egg proteins coagulate with heat, so stirring it in too early leaves it runny, while overcooking it makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, pepper, tomato, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, tomato, egg. 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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