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Butter Beans with Parsley Sauce

A dish of butter beans simmered in water and served with a parsley sauce made from milk, wheatmeal, parsley, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By T. R. Allinson · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Butter Beans with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick the beans, wash them, and steep them overnight in boiling water, just covering them.

  2. Use 2 or 3 ounces of beans per person.

  3. In the morning, cook the beans gently in the steeping water with a little butter until quite soft, about 2 hours.

  4. Keep the beans in only enough water to prevent burning; when the water boils away, add just enough to absorb.

Make the parsley sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of milk, 1 tablespoonful of Allinson fine wheatmeal, a handful of finely chopped parsley, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, pepper, and salt to taste.

  2. Boil the milk and thicken it with the flour, smoothing the flour with a little cold milk first; then add the lemon juice, seasoning, and parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve the beans with the parsley sauce, accompanied by potatoes and green vegetables.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

168Calories
9 gProtein
8 gFat
18 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By T. R. Allinson. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter beans (in the method)
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender after long gentle cooking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Wheatmeal flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Parsley
Provides fresh herbal flavour and colour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Smoothing the flour into cold milk before heating. Flour added directly to hot milk clumps, because its starch grains coat themselves in lumps before they can disperse. Mixing it smooth in cold milk first lets the starch spread evenly, giving a lump-free sauce when heated.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, lemon. 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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