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Broad Beans

Broad beans cooked in buttered paper bag with salted water, served with a sauce of cream, egg yolk, parsley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broad Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and cook

  1. Shell the young broad beans.

  2. Place the beans in a buttered paper bag with salted water.

  3. Seal the bag and cook on a grid shelf for 20 minutes in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix a little of the bean stock with 1 tablespoon of cream and the egg yolk.

  2. Add chopped parsley and a few drops of lemon juice to the mixture.

  3. Dish up the beans and pour the prepared sauce over them.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young broad beans
Form the main body of the dish, cooked gently in their own steam and stock.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream sauce as it gently heats, giving it a smooth, coating texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce and balancing the lemon's sharpness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the bag, helping the beans brown lightly and not stick.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolk into the sauce. Egg yolk thickens only gently warmed liquid; if the bean stock is too hot it can scramble into lumps. Add the stock slowly and keep the mixture warm rather than boiling so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, egg, parsley, lemon):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, egg, parsley, lemon. 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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