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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: Green beans and egg work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and 48 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Green beans + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together48 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

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.

Flavor stand-ins for the leek

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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