Name: Windsor Beans Li LA Poulette
Ingredients: 1 pound fresh young beans; Salt; Water; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon chopped winter savory; 2 egg yolks; ¼ cup cream; 1 teaspoon sugar

Why it works: Parsley and winter savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 863 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Windsor Beans Li LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

Boil the beans in salted water until tender.
Drain the beans and set aside.

Make the sauce and serve

In a pan, melt the butter and add the parsley, winter savory, and sugar.
Add the beans to the pan and stir to coat them in the sauce.
Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add to the beans, stirring gently.
Serve the beans with a short sauce and season to taste.

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.

Parsley + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together863 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Beans + winter savorytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together56 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Thicken the cream into a light, silky sauce that coats the beans.
Butter: Adds richness and carries the herb flavour through the beans.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce when combined with the yolks.
Fresh young beans: Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender before saucing.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture should be stirred gently over low heat off strong boiling. Too much heat or vigorous stirring can curdle the yolks, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the winter savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, parsley, egg, cream, sugar):

Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Winter savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, parsley, egg, cream, sugar. 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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Windsor Beans Li LA Poulette