Name: Savoury Broad-beans
Ingredients: 1 quart young broad beans; ½ cup butter; 2 tablespoons white sauce; pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon castor sugar; chopped parsley to taste; chopped tarragon to taste; fleurons or bread croutons for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Savoury Broad-beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

Shell the broad beans.
Boil the beans in salted water for 10 minutes.
Drain the beans in a sieve.

Cook and season

Melt the butter in a sauté pan.
Add the beans and white sauce.
Season with pepper and castor sugar.
Add chopped parsley and tarragon.
Let simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

Dish up.
Garnish with fleurons or bread croutons.
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.

Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 and tender texture of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
White sauce: Adds moisture and body, binding the beans into a creamy coating.
Castor sugar: Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning.

Swap the beans

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

Chestnutfits about as well
Beansthe original
Chickpeafits about as well
Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, pepper, sugar, parsley, tarragon, bread. 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.