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French Beans, to Keep All the Year

A preserved bean dish with cabbage, butter, flour, pepper, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Beans, to Keep All the Year

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Preserve the beans

  1. Gather young beans on a fine day.

  2. Layer coarse salt and beans in a stone jar until full, then cover the jar with salt.

  3. Tie a coarse cloth over the jar and place a weight on top.

  4. Store in a dry cellar.

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the beans.

  2. Soak the beans in soft water for 24 hours, changing the water often.

  3. Boil the beans with the white heart of a small cabbage without adding salt.

  4. Drain the beans.

  5. Chop the cabbage.

  6. Combine the beans and cabbage in a saucepan with butter rolled in flour.

  7. Add a little pepper and good gravy.

  8. Stew for 10 minutes.

  9. Serve.

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 + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Beans + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young beans
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender after soaking and stewing.
Coarse salt
Draws water out of the beans during preservation, keeping them from spoiling in the jar.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms a roux that thickens the stew.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the stewing liquid into a smooth sauce.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour that the beans and cabbage absorb while stewing.

The step that matters

Soaking the preserved beans. Salted beans must soak long enough, with frequent water changes, to remove excess salt; otherwise the finished dish stays too salty.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, pepper. 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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