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String Beans

String beans cooked with butter, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 267 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the strings from the beans and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Wash the beans and place them in boiling salted water to cover.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil until tender and the water has evaporated.

  2. Add the butter, more salt if needed, and nutmeg.

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. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the dish and provide the vegetable texture once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating that carries flavor across the beans.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor that complements the butter and beans.

The step that matters

Boil until tender and the water has evaporated. Cooking the beans until the water is gone concentrates their flavor and leaves them ready to take the butter. Stopping too early leaves them watery and underseasoned, while cooking too long can make them mushy.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg. 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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