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Salad

String Bean Salad

A salad of cooked string beans, onions, beets, parsley, seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the small string beans as directed in recipe No. 148.

  2. Let the beans cool, then place them in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Add the finely sliced cooked onions.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, vinegar, and olive oil.

  3. Add the finely chopped parsley and mix gently without breaking the beans.

  4. Garnish with the beets cut into rounds.

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

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

  2. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Small string beans
Form the main body of the salad, providing bulk and a crisp-tender bite.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and coating the beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.
Cooked onions
Contribute sweetness and a sharp aromatic note once softened.

The step that matters

Mix gently without breaking the beans. Cooked beans are fragile and their surfaces are easily torn. Gentle folding keeps them whole, so they stay tender-crisp and hold their shape in the dressing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley. 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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