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String Beans, Maitre D' Hotel

Sautéed string beans in butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

String Beans, Maitre D' Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cook the string beans as in the previous recipe.

  2. When done, immerse them in cold water.

  3. Drain them in a colander and place on a napkin to absorb moisture.

Finish in butter

  1. In a flat saucepan, melt the butter and add the beans.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then toss over heat until warm.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and a few drops of lemon juice 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. 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 carry the butter and seasoning.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries the flavour of the seasoning.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that brightens the buttery beans.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that lifts the flavour of the butter.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the beans before buttering. Surface water dilutes the butter and stops it coating the beans, so drying on a napkin lets the butter cling and keeps the dish from tasting watery.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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