Name: French, or Scarlet, Beans
Ingredients: French or scarlet beans; Salt; Butter

Why it works: Scarlet bean and butter work together. They rank in the top 75% of all ingredient pairs. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French, or Scarlet, Beans

Ingredients

French or scarlet beans
Salt
Butter

Directions

Prepare

Cut off the stalks and tops of the beans and remove the strings from the sides.
If the beans are large, divide them lengthwise into three or more slices, then cut them across.
For young and small beans, just cut off the tops and tails and divide them slantwise.
Soak the beans in cold water for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

Boil plenty of salted water, then add the beans and cook until tender.
Drain the beans in a colander and serve with melted butter.

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.

Scarlet bean + buttertop 75% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together0 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

French or scarlet beans: Provide the main vegetable and body of the dish, cooked until tender.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, savoury coating when melted over 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.