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Salad

Bean Salad

A salad of boiled green beans, seasoned with salt, lemon juice, olive oil, and chopped onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fine green beans.

Cook and cool

  1. Boil the beans until tender, then drain the water.

  2. Let the beans cool.

Dress

  1. In a bowl, mix the cooled beans with coarse sea salt, lemon juice, olive oil, and the chopped 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. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Green beans + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Green beans + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

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

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

Fine green beans
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a tender, slightly firm texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the beans a smooth coating.
Onion
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that cuts through the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender, then let them cool. Overcooked beans turn soft and dull in colour, while beans dressed while still warm absorb the oil unevenly and can wilt. Cooling first keeps them crisp-tender and evenly coated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green beans, lemon, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, lemon, olive. 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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