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 the beans
Wash the beans well.
Remove the ends of the beans.
Break the beans in half.
Place the beans in a basin without water.
Sprinkle the beans with coarse sea salt.
Let the beans sit for about 10 minutes.
If the beans are older, string them.
Split the beans down the middle.
Boil and finish
Add the beans and a small pinch of baking soda to a saucepan of boiling water.
Boil the beans for 10 to 15 minutes.
If the beans are very old, boil them for 25 to 30 minutes.
Strain the beans.
Dry the beans.
Chop the boiled beans.
Warm the chopped beans with butter in a saucepan.
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.
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Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provide the main vegetable body and fresh green flavour of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky coating that carries flavour over the cooked beans.
- Baking soda
- Raises the cooking water's pH, helping the beans stay bright green while they soften.
The step that matters
Boil the beans for 10 to 15 minutes. Overcooking turns the beans dull and mushy, while undercooking leaves them fibrous. Boiling in salted water with a small pinch of baking soda keeps colour bright, but too much soda makes them soft and off-flavoured, so timing and the amount matter.
“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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