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To Boil French Beans

Old English recipes for boiling young French beans and serving them with melted butter, veal gravy or a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Boil French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Take off the ends and stalks of the very small, young beans, and drop them into plenty of spring water as they are done.

  2. When all are ready, wash and drain them well.

  3. Throw them into a large saucepan of fast-boiling salted water.

  4. Boil until quite tender, about twelve to eighteen minutes.

  5. Pour into a colander, shake off the water, dish, and send quickly to table with good melted butter in a tureen.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt a couple of ounces of fresh butter in a clean saucepan and stir in a small dessertspoonful of flour.

  2. Keep shaken and gently simmered until lightly browned, then add salt and pepper.

  3. Pour in by degrees a small cupful of good veal gravy, or sweet rich cream.

  4. Toss the boiled beans in the sauce until as hot as possible.

  5. Stir in the beaten yolks of two fresh eggs and a little lemon juice, away from the fire, and serve without delay.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

187Calories
7 gProtein
17 gFat
2 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Eggs1 large egg (50g)78
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Vealnot in our table0

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

By Eliza Acton. 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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted butter forms the base of the sauce and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour (in the method)
Cooked with butter, it thickens the sauce so it coats the beans.
Eggs
Beaten yolks enrich and thicken the sauce gently when stirred in off the heat.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks away from the fire. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if the sauce is too hot, so they are added off the heat and the sauce is served promptly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, parsley, egg, pepper. 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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