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Green Beans, Meager

A simple green bean dish cooked with butter, flour, herbs, milk, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Beans, Meager

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the green beans until tender.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the cooked beans with butter, flour, parsley, leeks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and milk or water.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Serve with a mixture of egg yolks stirred in.

  2. If using water instead of milk, add a little vinegar.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Green beans
Form the main bulk of the dish and carry the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat.
Milk or water
Provides the liquid that forms the sauce and keeps the beans moist.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken a sauce only when gently heated. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, the proteins tighten and scramble into lumps. Stir them in gradually and keep the heat low so the sauce turns smooth and creamy.

Swap the green beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, leek, pepper, nutmeg, 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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