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Preserve

To Preserve Beans

A method for preserving beans using salt, water, vinegar, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Preserve Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Gather beans when they are full size and pick them.

  2. Scald the beans for a few minutes without losing their color.

  3. Drain and cool the beans.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place them in a stone jar, leaving space for the pickle.

  2. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt to the water.

  3. Discard the water.

  4. Pour a stronger pickle made of 2 parts water and 1 part vinegar over the beans.

  5. Add 2 to 3 handfuls of salt.

  6. Pour melted butter over all.

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

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

  2. Beans + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
The main food being preserved, whose texture softens and flavor develops during pickling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the pickle from spoiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the beans and helps preserve them in the brine.
Melted butter
Forms a fat layer over the surface that helps shut out air from the pickle.

The step that matters

Scalding the beans. Scalding for only a few minutes brightens and sets the color and partly softens the beans. Overcooking turns them mushy and dull, and the beans must cool before they go into the pickle.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Soybeanfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter. 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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