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Green Beans

A side dish of green beans simmered with beef drippings, onion, butter, flour, and water to make a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Break the green beans into two or three pieces and wash them.

  2. In a pot, combine the beans, beef drippings, and boiling water. Boil until the beans are tender.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and chopped onion. Cook until the onion is soft.

  2. Add enough water to the onion mixture to create a gravy and season with salt.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the cooked beans with the gravy and bring to a boil again.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Green beans + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Green beans
Form the main body of the dish and, when boiled until tender, the texture of the final dish.
Beef drippings
Add rich, savory fat that flavors the beans as they cook.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds a rich, savory flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked in fat with the onion, giving it body.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness as it softens in the butter and flour mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the flour in the butter before adding water. Cooking flour in fat lets its starch coat and hydrate evenly when liquid is added, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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