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French Bean Salad

A salad of boiled beans dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, tarragon, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 589 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans whole until tender.

  2. Drain and dry them on a cloth.

  3. Once cold, place the beans in a bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour salad oil over the beans.

  2. Sprinkle with black pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add a few drops of wine vinegar.

  4. If desired, sprinkle with finely minced tarragon and chives.

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. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beans + tarragontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the body of the salad, staying firm and tender when boiled whole.
Salad oil
Adds fat and a smooth coating that carries flavour across the beans.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the beans before dressing. Water left on the beans dilutes the oil and vinegar, so the dressing slides off instead of clinging to the beans and the flavour tastes weak.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, wine, vinegar, tarragon, chive):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, wine, vinegar, tarragon, chive. 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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