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French Beans, in White Sauce

A simple side dish of tender French beans tossed in a creamy white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Beans, in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the ends of the French beans and cook them in boiling salted water until tender.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute, then gradually whisk in the milk.

  3. Cook until the sauce thickens, then season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Drain the beans and combine them with the white sauce before serving.

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

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Provide the main vegetable body and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and forms the base of the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, which thickens as it heats.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until it thickens. Flour must cook briefly in butter to lose its raw taste, and the milk must be heated with constant whisking so it thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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