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String Beans with Onion

A simple side dish of boiled string beans seasoned with vinegar, butter, flour, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

String Beans with Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the beans

  1. Cut the string beans.

  2. Boil them in salted water until tender.

  3. Let the water reduce to about 1 cup.

Make the sauce

  1. Add vinegar, butter, and flour to thicken, then remove from heat.

  2. Mix in the finely chopped onion.

  3. Serve immediately without cooking the onion.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
The main vegetable; boiling softens them until tender and makes up the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as its starch swells with heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the beans and sauce.
Onion
Adds sharp, fresh aroma and bite when left uncooked.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour thickens only when its starch absorbs liquid and swells with heat. Stir it in well to avoid lumps, and stop the heat once the sauce thickens so it does not scorch or turn gluey.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, onion. 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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