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String Beans

A cooked vegetable dish of string beans simmered with butter, flour, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Snap and wash the string beans.

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans in plenty of water for about 15 minutes, then drain.

  2. Return the beans to about 2 quarts of boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the butter, rubbed into the flour, and the sweet cream.

  2. Add salt and pepper just before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 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

String beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb flavour during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Rubbed into the butter, it thickens the cream and helps bind the sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, combining with the flour to form a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter, rubbed into the flour, and the sweet cream. Adding the flour-butter mixture to hot liquid without first blending it smooth can leave lumps. Rubbing the butter into the flour separates the flour particles so they disperse evenly before thickening.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

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

More string beans recipes

Canned 17Pickled 11Creamed 9Boiled 6French 5German 3 See all 97 →

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