Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
French Beans, to Keep All the Year
Ingredients
Directions
Preserve the beans
Gather young beans on a fine day.
Layer salt at the bottom of a stone jar, then add a layer of beans, repeating until the jar is full.
Cover the jar with salt, tie a coarse cloth over it, place a board on top, and weigh it down to keep out air.
Store in a dry cellar.
Prepare and cook
When ready to use, wash the beans and soak them in soft water for 24 hours, changing the water often.
Boil the beans without adding salt.
Boil the white heart of a small cabbage with the beans, then drain both.
Chop the cabbage and combine it with the beans in a saucepan with butter rolled in flour.
Add a little pepper and some gravy, then let it stew for 10 minutes before serving.
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.
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Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,081 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beans + cabbagetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together290 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,733 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,080 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Young french beans
- Form the main vegetable body of the dish once preserved and rehydrated.
- Coarse salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the beans through curing in the jar.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stewed vegetables.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and cooking liquid so the stew becomes smooth and cohesive.
- Gravy
- Adds savoury depth and moisture to the stewed beans and cabbage.
The step that matters
Soaking the preserved beans. Salt-cured beans must be soaked in fresh water and the water changed often so excess salt leaches out; otherwise the dish tastes too salty. Boiling without added salt then keeps the seasoning controlled.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, flour, pepper):
- Okrafits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Chivefits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, 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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