Name: Feves a LA Maitre D'hotel
Ingredients: white beans; bechamel sauce; chopped parsley; lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

white beans
bechamel sauce
chopped parsley
lemon juice

Directions

Boil and peel the white beans.
Reduce the bechamel sauce over heat.
Mix in chopped parsley and lemon juice.
Add the beans to the hot sauce and stir over heat.
Serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beans + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,376 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,472 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Beans + saucetop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,184 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + parsleytop 13% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the beans

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

Chickpeabetter flavor fit
Pistachioabout as good a flavor fit
Beansthe original
Walnutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).