Name: String Beans, Poulette
Ingredients: string beans; 2 tablespoons butter; salt; pepper; nutmeg; 2 tablespoons Allemande sauce; lemon juice; chopped parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

String Beans, Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the string beans as directed in recipe No. 148.
In a saucepan, combine the string beans and butter.
Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

Warm thoroughly, then add the Allemande sauce.
Toss well to combine.
Before serving, add a few drops of lemon juice and sprinkle 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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, cooked gently in butter and sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, helping the beans coat evenly and stay glossy.
Allemande sauce: Adds a rich, creamy coating that gives the beans body and flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.

Swap the beans

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

Chickpeafits better
Pistachiofits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Beansthe original

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