Why it works: Green beans and butter work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
French Beans
Ingredients
Directions
String the beans, then cut them into four pieces, and then cross-cut them into eight pieces.
Soak the beans in water with salt.
When the water in your pan boils, add some salt and the beans.
Cook until the beans are tender, being careful not to lose their bright green color.
Serve the beans on a plate with butter in a cup.
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.
-
Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together154 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
More french beans recipes
You might also like
Green Peas229 recipes
Green Pea Soup181 recipes
Green Corn Soup46 recipes
Green Peas Soup35 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.