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French Beans and Scarlet Runners

A simple boiled French bean dish seasoned with salt, baking soda, and 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 ↓

French Beans and Scarlet Runners

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. String the beans and cut them into long, thin strips.

  2. Wash the beans well and put them into a large saucepan of boiling water.

  3. Add the salt and baking soda.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil uncovered until tender, about 20 minutes or longer if the beans are old.

  2. Drain the beans and return them to the saucepan.

  3. Add a good lump of butter and toss over the heat to melt the butter.

  4. Serve very hot.

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

French beans
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender vegetable when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat that carries flavour over the beans.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the beans soften and keep a bright green colour.

The step that matters

Boil uncovered until tender. Beans need enough time in rolling boiling water to soften fully. Older beans take longer, so test for tenderness rather than relying on the clock alone.

“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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