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Savoury French Beans, Poulette

Savory French beans cooked with butter, seasonings, béchamel, cream, and egg yolks, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoury French Beans, Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick, string, cut, and boil the French beans until tender.

  2. Drain the beans in a sieve and place them in a stewpan with butter.

Season and simmer

  1. Season with salt, pepper, sugar, and chopped green onions or chives.

  2. Toss over medium heat for a few minutes.

  3. Add the béchamel sauce and let it simmer for ten minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the cream and egg yolks until it thickens.

  2. Dish up and sprinkle with finely 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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

French beans
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the seasoning across the beans.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy base that coats the beans.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a silky texture.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or boils after they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stirring them in just before serving, off strong heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, cream, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, cream, egg. 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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