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French Beans, to Keep All the Year

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Beans, to Keep All the Year

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather young beans on a fine day.

  2. Layer coarse sea salt and beans in a stone jar until full, finishing with salt on top.

  3. Cover with a coarse cloth, place a board and weight on top to keep out air, and store in a dry cellar.

  4. When ready to use, wash beans and soak in soft water for 24 hours, changing the water often.

  5. Boil beans without adding salt, preferably with the white heart of a small cabbage.

  6. Drain beans and chop the cabbage.

  7. In a saucepan, combine beans, chopped cabbage, butter rolled in flour, and a little pepper.

  8. Add good gravy and let stew for 10 minutes before serving as a side dish.

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 + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Beans + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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