Name: Printanier Butter
Ingredients: 1 cup early-season vegetables (carrots, French beans, peas, asparagus heads); 1 cup unsalted butter; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 cup consomme

Why it works: Beans and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 292 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Printanier Butter

Ingredients

1 cup early-season vegetables (carrots, French beans, peas, asparagus heads)
1 cup unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup consomme

Directions

Cook the vegetables

Cook the vegetables quickly in boiling salted water until tender.
Drain and dry the vegetables.

Make the butter

Pound the vegetables with an equal weight of butter.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Carrot variation

For carrots, mince and cook with consommé and sugar until reduced.
Pound the cooked carrots with an equal weight of butter and rub through a fine sieve.

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.

Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together808 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + asparagustop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together571 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

Unsalted butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the vegetables a smooth, spreadable texture.
Early-season vegetables: Provide the main flavour and colour, and form the body of the butter once pounded.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, peas, asparagus, butter, sugar):

Leekfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Cauliflowerfits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, peas, asparagus, butter, sugar. 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.