Name: Feench Beans
Ingredients: 1 can French beans; 1 quart cold water; 3 tablespoons butter; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Beans and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,799 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Feench Beans

Ingredients

1 can French beans
1 quart cold water
3 tablespoons butter
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

Prepare the beans

Drain the can of French beans.
Place the drained beans in a strainer.
Pour 1 quart of cold water over the beans.

Heat and season

Transfer the beans to a saucepan.
Add 3 tablespoons of butter.
Heat thoroughly.
Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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.

Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans: Form the body of the dish, providing the main bulk and tender texture once heated.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth coating that carries flavor over the beans.

“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.