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A breakfast dish of crispy bacon, tender string beans, and a butter‑cream sauce, served with coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the bacon until crispy.

  2. Steam or boil the string beans until tender.

  3. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Serve the bacon with string beans and pour the butter-cream mixture over them.

  2. Brew and serve coffee.

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

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

  2. Beans + coffeetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  5. Butter + coffeetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat and adds salty, savoury flavour as it crisps.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Cream
Blends with the melted butter to make a smoother, looser sauce.
String beans
Provide the vegetable base, becoming tender when steamed or boiled.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, coffee. 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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