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Green Bean Pudding

A steamed green bean pudding flavored with salt, pepper, egg yolk, cream, and served with parsley sauce and boiled bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Bean Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the green beans in water until tender.

  2. Blanch and pound the beans.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the egg yolk and cream, mixing well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and boil.

Serve

  1. Turn out before serving and pour parsley sauce over it.

  2. Serve with boiled bacon.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Green beans + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 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

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Form the bulk of the pudding and provide its main flavour and body.
Egg yolk
Binds the pounded beans so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and boil. The buttered basin lets the pudding release cleanly when turned out. The pudding must be cooked through so the egg yolk sets and holds its shape.

Swap the green beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, cream, butter, parsley, sauce. 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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