Name: To Pickle French Beans
Ingredients: French beans; coarse sea salt; boiling vinegar; vine leaves; sliced ginger; peppercorns

Why it works: Beans and ginger work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 609 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Pick and clean the beans.
Sprinkle salt over them and stir frequently until it dissolves.
Drain the beans and place them in jars.
Cover the beans with boiling vinegar.
Let the jars stand for four days away from heat.
Put the vinegar and pickles in a stew-pan covered with vine leaves.
Simmer until the leaves turn yellow, then add fresh leaves until they turn a fine green color.

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.

Beans + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + vinegartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,347 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,126 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).