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French Beans

A preserved bean dish made by brining, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather French beans before they have strings.

  2. Prepare a strong brine with water and salt until the beans turn yellow.

  3. Drain the beans from the brine.

Pickle

  1. Pour boiling hot vinegar over the beans and seal them for 24 hours.

  2. Repeat this process for four or five days until the beans turn green.

  3. Add ½ ounce each of cloves, mace, and pepper to a peck of beans.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beans + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together908 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

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

French beans
The main vegetable, which changes colour as it is brined and pickled.
Boiling hot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its tang.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickled beans.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the pickle.
Pepper
Adds gentle heat and spice aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling hot vinegar over the beans. Vinegar's acidity is what preserves the beans and sharpens their flavour. Hot vinegar carries its flavour and acidity into the beans faster, so the beans must be fully covered and sealed to keep the acid in contact with them for the full 24 hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, vinegar, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, vinegar, clove, 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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