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String Beans, German Style

A sautéed string bean dish flavored with butter, onion, parsley, and a touch of sugar, finished with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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String Beans, German Style

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

String Beans, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the sliced onion.

  2. Add the string beans, season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then add the parsley and white broth.

  3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle flour over the beans, toss well, and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

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 dish and absorb the flavors of the broth and butter as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the beans.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when the onion is fried.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savory depth to the base.
White broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that steams the beans and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Sprinkle flour over the beans, toss well, and cook for an additional 15 minutes.. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump; tossing it evenly over the beans lets it disperse and thicken the sauce smoothly as it cooks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beans, pepper, sugar, parsley, flour. 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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