Name: French Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 pound French beans; ½ cup olive oil; ⅓ cup vinegar; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon winter savory

Why it works: Parsley and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 863 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

French Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

String and boil the French beans in salted water until tender.
Drain the beans well and let them cool.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, mix the cooled beans with olive oil, vinegar, coarse sea salt, black pepper, parsley, and winter savory.
Toss to combine and 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.

Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together863 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + winter savorytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,370 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans: Provide the main body and tender-crisp texture of the salad.
Olive oil: Carries the herbs and seasoning and gives the beans a smooth, rich coating.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the beans and balances the oil.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, vinegar, pepper, parsley, winter savory):

Lentilsfits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Black-eyed peafits about as well
Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, pepper, parsley, winter savory. 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.