Name: Fillet of Beef French Beans
Ingredients: 2 pounds French beans; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef French Beans

Ingredients

2 pounds French beans
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Prepare

Peel the external fiber from the French bean pods, leaving them intact.
Place the beans in a large, sealable jar with butter, sugar, and salt.

Steam and serve

Cover the jar tightly and steam it in boiling water for 1 hour.
After steaming, drain the beans and serve as desired.

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.

Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beans + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 texture of the dish once steamed until tender.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and carrying flavor.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savory salt and rounds out the beans' flavor.