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Garden Beans Boiled

Boiled garden beans seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and optional ham or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Garden Beans Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the shelled beans in plenty of water with salt until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and toss them in a stewpan with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Serve the beans with parsley and butter on the side.

  4. For added flavor, boil the beans with a piece of ham or bacon and serve it alongside.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Garden beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the beans with fat for a smooth texture.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, ham. 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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