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French or Kidney Beans

A sautéed dish of fresh French beans cooked with butter, salt, and white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

French or Kidney Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the stalks and remove the fiber from the beans.

  2. Cut the beans into thin strips lengthwise and soak in cold water.

Boil

  1. Boil plenty of salted water.

  2. Drain the beans.

  3. Add the beans to the boiling water.

  4. Cook uncovered until tender (15 minutes for young beans, 30 minutes for older beans).

  5. Drain the beans in a colander.

Sauté

  1. Melt a slice of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sauté the beans until coated.

  3. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the beans while sautéing.

  4. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of white sugar over the beans while sautéing.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh french beans
Form the main body of the dish; cooking softens their fibrous texture until tender.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the beans and gives them a rich, savory flavor.
White sugar
Adds gentle sweetness and helps the beans brown lightly while sautéing.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, not longer. Older beans need about twice as long as young ones. Cooking past tender breaks down the cell walls further, so the beans turn soft and mushy and lose their crisp bite.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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