Name: Canned String Beans
Ingredients: fresh green beans; water; coarse sea salt; good vinegar

Why it works: Green beans and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 190 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Canned String Beans

Ingredients

fresh green beans
water
coarse sea salt
good vinegar

Directions

Prepare the beans

Cut the beans into bite-sized pieces.
Place them in a large porcelain kettle and cover with water.
Add enough coarse sea salt to make the water quite salty.
Cook the beans until almost tender.

Can the beans

Pack the beans into quart cans, covering them with the cooking liquid.
Leave a space at the top of each can for 2 tablespoons of vinegar.
Seal the cans airtight.

Use the canned beans

To use, rinse the beans, then boil and drain.
Season as you would fresh beans, but do not add salt.

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.

Green beans + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together190 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh green beans: The main vegetable, cooked until almost tender before canning.
Coarse sea salt: Salts the cooking water, seasoning the beans as they cook.
Good vinegar: Added to each can for acidity and a tangy flavor.

“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.