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String Beans, Bretonne

A sautéed string bean dish with butter, flour, broth, and seasonings, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

String Beans, Bretonne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Sauté the diced onion in butter until golden.

  2. Stir in the flour and moisten with white broth.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the whole boiled beans.

  2. Simmer for a few seconds to heat the beans.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  5. Serve on a hot platter.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. 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

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns in butter, adding flavour to the base.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
White broth
Forms the liquid of the sauce that coats the beans.
Boiled beans
Serve as the main vegetable, warmed through in the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and moisten with broth. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beans, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beans, pepper, nutmeg, parsley. 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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