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French Beans a LA Franqaise

A simple sauté of French beans with onions, butter, parsley, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 a LA Franqaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until softened but not browned.

  3. Layer the cut beans over the onion, sprinkling with parsley, salt, and pepper between layers.

Stew and finish

  1. Let the beans stew, adding the boiling broth or water when almost done.

  2. Just before finishing, add a little thickening if desired.

  3. Cook young beans for about 45 minutes, or older beans for up to 1.5 hours.

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

French beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming tender as they stew slowly in moisture.
Onion
Softens and sweetens gently in butter, adding a savory base flavor to the beans.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor while the onion softens without browning.
Broth or water
Provides the moisture that lets the beans stew until tender.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until softened but not browned. Browning the onion turns its flavor bitter and harsher, while gentle softening in butter builds a sweet, mellow base that carries through the whole dish.

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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