Name: String Beans, Lyonnaise
Ingredients: 2 cups string beans; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 onion, halved and finely sliced; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; 2 tablespoons Espagnole sauce; 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

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 ↓

String Beans, Lyonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the string beans as in recipe No. 148.

Cook

In a flat saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the sliced onion and fry lightly until softened.
Add the prepared string beans, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the Espagnole sauce.
Toss over the heat until heated through.

Serve

Serve topped with chopped parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

String beans: Form the main body of the dish and provide its fresh, tender-crisp texture.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the onion soften and lightly brown in the pan.
Onion: Adds savory sweetness as it softens and browns, giving the dish its Lyonnaise character.
Espagnole sauce: Adds body and a rich, savory depth that coats the beans.

Swap the beans

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

Black-eyed peafits about as well
Beansthe original
Chickpeafits about as well
Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, sauce, 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.