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French, or Scarlet, Beans

A simple boiled bean dish seasoned with salt and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Scarlet bean and butter work together. They rank in the top 75% of all ingredient pairs. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French, or Scarlet, Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the stalks and tops of the beans and remove the strings.

  2. If large, slice them lengthwise into three or more pieces.

  3. If small, cut off the tops and tails.

  4. Soak the beans in cold water for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil plenty of salted water, then add the beans and cook until tender.

  2. Drain the beans in a colander and serve with melted butter.

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. Scarlet bean + buttertop 75% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

French or scarlet beans
Provide the main vegetable, whose tender texture is the goal of the cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooked beans, along with a rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the beans until tender. Beans must be cooked long enough to soften their fibrous cell walls, but not so long that they turn mushy and dull in colour. Testing a piece regularly helps you stop at the right moment.

“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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