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Green String Beans

A stew of string beans and pork simmered in water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break string beans into pieces and soak in cold water for a while.

  2. Combine fat pork and 2 cups of cold water in a pot.

Cook the stew

  1. Cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Add string beans to the pot and cook for 1.5 hours.

  3. If the water boils out, add a little warm water.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then serve on a platter with sliced pork.

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

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

  2. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Fat pork
Renders fat and savory flavor into the cooking water, giving the stew its richness.
String beans
Form the body of the stew and become tender through long simmering.

The step that matters

Topping up the water during the long cook. The beans must stay submerged and the stew must keep simmering gently for over an hour. Adding warm rather than cold water avoids sharply cooling the pot, so the liquid stays at a steady simmer and the beans cook evenly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Soybeanfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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