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String Beans in Gravy

A sautéed onion and butter base with gravy, simmered with string beans, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

String Beans in Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sauté the diced onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add enough gravy to make a sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the sauce, then add the string beans and simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  5. Serve in a deep vegetable dish or use as a garnish.

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. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

String beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb flavor from the simmering sauce.
Gravy
Forms the sauce that coats and flavors the beans as they simmer.
Onion
Softens in butter to add a mild, sweet savory base to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onion and carrying flavor.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

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