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Bean Salad

A salad of boiled string beans tossed with vinegar, oil, pepper, and coarse sea salt, optionally garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. String the beans and cut them in half.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water until tender.

Dress and serve

  1. Once cold, toss the beans with a French dressing made of vinegar, oil, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. If desired, add a little chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 salad and provide its texture once cooked.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the French dressing, giving the salad its sharp, bright flavor.
Oil
Carries the dressing and coats the beans, adding richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Beans cooked too briefly stay fibrous and squeaky, while overcooking makes them soft and dull in color. Testing for tenderness with a bite, then cooling them promptly, keeps them crisp-tender and bright green.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cuminfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, vinegar, pepper. 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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