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String Bean Salad

A salad of blanched string beans tossed with parsley, onion, chervil, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 774 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

String Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the ends of the string beans.

  2. Cook the beans in boiling water with salt until tender.

  3. Remove the beans with a skimmer and transfer them to cold water.

  4. Drain the beans thoroughly until nearly dry.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the beans in a salad dish and sprinkle with parsley, onion, and chervil.

  2. Pour French dressing over the salad and serve.

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. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beans + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

String beans
Form the main body of the salad, cooked until tender and then dressed.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that coats the beans and seasons the salad.
Chopped onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that contrasts with the mild beans.

The step that matters

Drain the beans thoroughly until nearly dry. Any water left on the beans dilutes the French dressing, so it cannot coat them well and the salad turns watery and bland.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, parsley, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

“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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