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French Beans a LA Maitre D'hotel

A side dish of green beans simmered in béchamel sauce with butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

French Beans a LA Maitre D'hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick, string, and cut the beans into three or four strips.

  2. Wash well and drain in a colander.

  3. Boil the beans in a pot of salted boiling water until tender.

  4. Drain and plunge into cold water for 5 minutes, then drain again on a napkin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine béchamel sauce, butter, parsley, nutmeg, mignonette pepper, salt, and lemon juice. Stir over medium heat until well mixed.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the beans to the sauce and toss over the heat until hot.

  2. Serve the beans with a border of croutons.

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. 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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Form the main body of the dish and provide the tender texture being served.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy base that coats the beans and carries the seasoning.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a bright green note.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that lifts the richness of the butter and cream sauce.

The step that matters

Plunging the beans in cold water. Cold water stops residual cooking so the beans stay bright green and keep a crisp-tender bite rather than turning dull and soft.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, parsley, nutmeg, 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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