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Geeen Flageolet Beans, with String Beans

A sautéed dish of flageolet beans and string beans with butter, cream sauce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Geeen Flageolet Beans, with String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil and drain the flageolet beans.

  2. Cut the string beans into diamond shapes and boil them until tender, then drain.

Cook and serve

  1. In a flat saucepan, combine the flageolet beans and string beans with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Toss over medium heat until warmed through.

  3. Add cream sauce and chopped parsley, then serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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

Flageolet beans
Provide the main body and creamy texture of the dish.
String beans
Add crisp-tender texture and fresh green color.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it coats the beans.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness, binding the beans together.

The step that matters

Boil the string beans until tender, then drain. Boiling too long leaves the string beans soft and dull in color, while stopping too early leaves them fibrous. Draining well keeps excess water from thinning the butter and cream sauce added later.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, cream, sauce, parsley):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, sauce, parsley. 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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