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Beans, French, Boiled

Boiled French beans cooked with butter, flour, herbs, stock, eggs, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beans, French, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the ends and stalks of the young beans and remove the strings.

  2. Place the beans in a large saucepan of boiling water with salt.

  3. Boil the beans for 15 minutes if young, or 20-25 minutes if old, until tender.

  4. Drain the beans and return them to the saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the saucepan, then stir in the flour to thicken.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, thyme, chives, and stock; season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stew for 10 minutes, then thicken with beaten eggs mixed with milk or cream.

Serve

  1. Serve quickly, adding lemon juice if desired.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Beans + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + chivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Provide the main vegetable body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, coating sauce.
Eggs
Set gently in the warm sauce to thicken and enrich it.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken with eggs gently. Eggs set when heated. If the sauce is too hot or boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so add them off the heat or at a low simmer and stir steadily.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, thyme, chive, egg, milk):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, thyme, chive, egg, milk. 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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