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Bean Salad

A salad of cooked beans served on lettuce with French dressing or sauce tartare.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the strings from both sides of the beans and slice each bean in half lengthwise, then crosswise.

  2. Place the cut beans in cold water immediately.

Cook

  1. Cover the beans with boiling salted water and cook for 20 minutes, then drain.

  2. For the salad, place the beans in cold water for 10 minutes, then cover with boiling water mixed with olive oil.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes or until tender, then season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Arrange the beans on lettuce leaves and cover with French dressing or sauce tartare.

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. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young, tender beans
Provide the main body of the salad, becoming tender as they cook.
Olive oil
Adds richness and moisture to the beans while they cook in the oil-mixed water.

The step that matters

Cooking in boiling water for the stated times. Beans cooked too long soften excessively and lose their bright colour and crisp texture, while undercooked beans stay fibrous. Checking for tenderness at the end of the cooking time helps the beans reach the intended texture.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, lettuce, sauce):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, lettuce, sauce. 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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String 29Green 19French 11Kidney 11White 11Lima 6 See all 45 →

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