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To Boil French Beans and Scarlet Runners

Boiled French beans and scarlet runners served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Boil French Beans and Scarlet Runners

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the tops and tails of the beans and remove the strings from the backs.

  2. Cut the pods into slanting pieces or split them lengthwise and then cut across.

  3. Soak the beans in cold water for a few minutes, then strain them.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the beans in water with a little salt and baking soda until soft.

  2. Strain the beans using a colander and serve with melted butter on the side.

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. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 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

Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften and keep a bright green colour.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that coats the beans and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until soft. Beans are tough when raw and need enough time in boiling water to break down their fibres. Stopping too early leaves them chewy, while overcooking turns them dull and mushy. Tasting for tenderness is the reliable check.

“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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