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Soup

French Beans

A sautéed green bean dish with butter, salt, pepper, stock, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,733 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut the French beans into thin strips.

  2. Boil the beans in plenty of boiling salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the beans in a sieve.

Finish the beans

  1. Place the beans in a saucepan with a little butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add some stock thickened with a little flour and heat over the fire.

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. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which softens when boiled until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the beans a smooth, glossy coating.
Stock
Supplies moisture and savory flavor for the sauce around the beans.
Flour
Thickens the stock so it clings to the beans instead of running off.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Boiling in plenty of well-salted water cooks the beans evenly and seasons them from within. Stopping too early leaves them fibrous, while overcooking makes them soft and dull in colour.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour. 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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