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French Beans

A sautéed French bean dish with butter, milk, egg yolks, parsley, and scallion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Remove the fibers from the beans and wash them.

  2. Boil the beans in salted water until cooked.

  3. Transfer the beans to cold water to preserve their color.

Cook and serve

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add salt, nutmeg, and milk or cooking water.

  2. Drain the beans and add them to the stew-pan, cooking for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with parsley and scallion.

  4. Serve the beans topped with the egg yolk mixture.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 and carry the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the topping and add richness and body when gently set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, giving a smooth flavour.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the beans cook in, adding body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the beans to the milk mixture. Milk can scorch or curdle if it boils too hard, so keep the heat gentle and stir while the beans cook in the stew-pan.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, milk, egg, parsley):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, milk, egg, 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.

More french beans recipes

Boiled 29Pickled 12Preserved 9Plain 4Stewed 4Creamed 3 See all 54 →

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