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Broad Beans, with Cream Poulette

Broad beans cooked in a butter‑flour roux, simmered with white broth, parsley, summer savory, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Broad Beans, with Cream Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the shelled broad beans.

  2. Boil the beans until tender.

  3. Immerse the beans in cold water and drain in a colander.

Make the poulette sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Cook the roux for 10 minutes.

  4. Gradually add the white broth to the butter and flour mixture.

  5. Add the beans to the mixture.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Add the parsley and summer savory.

  8. Let the mixture simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

  9. Stir in the cream and bring to a boil.

  10. Garnish with chopped parsley before serving.

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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beans + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Flour + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender after boiling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
White broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the roux for 10 minutes. The roux must cook long enough to lose its raw flour taste, but not so long that it darkens. Adding the broth to a properly cooked roux, and stirring while adding it, helps the sauce thicken smoothly without lumps.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Lentilsfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

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