Name: Leg or Shoulder with French Beans
Ingredients: 200 French beans, cut and boiled; ¼ pound fresh butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons powdered sugar; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; ½ pint melted butter; 1 egg yolk; ⅓ cup cream

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Leg or Shoulder with French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the French beans until tender.
In a stewpan, combine the boiled beans, butter, pepper, salt, sugar, and nutmeg.
Heat over the fire until the butter melts.
Add the melted butter and boil for 10 minutes.
Quickly stir in the egg yolk mixed with cream.
Pour into a dish and serve the joint over the beans.

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.

Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together267 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the beans

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

Almondfits better
Walnutfits better
Chestnutfits better
Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.