Why it works: Beans and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,474 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Wax Beans
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Select fresh wax beans.
Prepare by trimming the ends.
Cook and serve
Boil water in a pot.
Add the wax beans to the boiling water.
Cook until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
Drain the beans and toss with a little lemon juice before serving.
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.
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Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,474 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
- Wax beans
- Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender texture.
- Lemon juice
- Adds a bright acidity that lifts the mild flavor of the beans.
“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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