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French Beans

A cooked French bean dish seasoned with salt, broth, cream, butter, flour, pepper, chives or shallot, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the ends and stalks of the French beans and divide them in half or shred them.

  2. Soak the beans in saltwater until the saucepan boils.

Boil

  1. Add the beans with some salt.

  2. Once tender, serve immediately to preserve the green color.

Stew

  1. When half done, drain the water.

  2. Add the beans to the broth.

  3. Stir in cream, butter, and flour.

  4. Stew gently until tender.

Finish

  1. Place boiled beans in a dripping pan under roasting meat.

  2. Add pepper and salt.

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. Beans + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the beans.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky body to the stewing liquid.
Broth
Provides savory flavor and the liquid in which the beans stew.
Chives or shallot
Adds a mild onion-like aroma to the finished beans.

The step that matters

Serve once tender, without holding. Prolonged heat breaks down the chlorophyll that keeps green vegetables bright, so beans left cooking or standing turn dull olive-brown. Removing them promptly once tender preserves their green color.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

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

More french beans recipes

Boiled 29Pickled 12Preserved 9Plain 4Stewed 4Creamed 3 See all 54 →

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