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French Beans with Fine Herbs

A sautéed dish of French beans flavored with butter, shallots, parsley, chives, nutmeg, lemon juice, and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

French Beans with Fine Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the herbs

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped shallots, parsley, and chives; sauté until fragrant.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked French beans and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Toss everything over a brisk fire until the beans are thoroughly hot.

  3. Dish up the beans, garnish with croutons, 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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Form the main body of the dish, carrying the buttery herb coating.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the shallots and herbs.
Shallots
Provide a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma when sautéed.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavour.
Chives
Add a mild onion note and fresh aroma to the beans.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the beans.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Beansthe original

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