Name: Aux Fines Herbes
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked beans; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons common garden cress; 1 shallot, finely minced (optional); ¼ teaspoon pepper; a pinch of grated nutmeg

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
Add the parsley, garden cress, shallot (if using), pepper, and nutmeg.
Pour the mixture over the cooked beans and serve.

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.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Garden cress + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together147 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked beans: Form the bulk of the dish and carry the herb butter.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and helps the herbs coat the beans.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a mild herbal flavor.
Garden cress: Adds a peppery, fresh flavor and aroma.
Shallot: Adds a mild onion-like aroma and flavor.
Nutmeg: Adds warm, sweet aroma in small amounts.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, parsley, garden cress, pepper, nutmeg):

Shallotthe original
Lettucefits about as well
Chivefits less well
Mustardfits less well

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