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Haricot Beans, Maitre D'hotel

A simple haricot bean dish seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, chives, white sauce, 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 ↓

Haricot Beans, Maitre D'hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Blanch and boil the haricot beans until tender, then drain them.

  2. Melt a small piece of butter in a stew pan, add the beans, and season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. When warmed through, mix in chopped parsley and chives.

  2. Thicken with a spoonful of white sauce and flavor with lemon juice.

  3. Shake well over the heat for a few minutes, then dish up and serve.

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. Beans + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries the seasoning.
White sauce
Thickens the beans slightly so they cling together in a creamy coating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery, herbed flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the white sauce. Stirring in too much white sauce or letting it sit over heat can make the dish heavy or cause it to scorch. A single spoonful, shaken gently over low heat, thickens the coating evenly without clumping.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, chive, sauce, 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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