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French Beans K LA FRANgAISE

A simple French bean dish cooked with onion, butter, parsley, pepper, salt, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

French Beans K LA FRANgAISE

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onion

  1. Chop the onion into small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the onion; cook until softened but not browned.

Stew the beans

  1. Layer the cut beans in the stewpan, sprinkling with parsley, pepper, and salt between layers.

  2. Let the beans stew, then add the boiling broth or water when almost done.

  3. If using young beans, cook for 45 minutes; if the beans are old, cook for up to 90 minutes.

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

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

  2. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Walnut + beanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softened slowly in butter, it builds a sweet, mild flavour base for the beans.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the dish.
French beans
The main vegetable, which becomes tender as it stews slowly in the pan.
Broth or water
Adds moisture so the beans stew gently instead of drying or scorching.

The step that matters

Soften the onion without browning it. Cooking the onion gently until soft lets its sugars release sweetness without caramelising. Browning would turn the flavour bitter-edged and change the dish's delicate character.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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