Skip to main content
Main

French Beans a LA Cream for a Dish

A creamy sauce of butter, egg yolks, cream, and vinegar coats tender green beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Beans a LA Cream for a Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut the young green beans into strips.

  2. Boil the beans in plenty of water with salt to keep them green.

  3. Once cooked, drain and dry the beans.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the melted butter and heat gently.

  4. Once hot, stir in the vinegar and the beans.

  5. Simmer for five minutes, stirring continuously to prevent burning or curdling.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Green beans + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Young green beans
Provide the main vegetable body and fresh, tender texture for the creamed dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and butter mixture into a smooth, custard-like sauce as they gently heat.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce and helping it stay smooth when heated with the yolks.
Fresh butter
Provides fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk mixture gently while stirring. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot or are left unstirred they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Pea SoupGreen Pea Soup181 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes