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To Boil French Beans

Boiled French beans with butter, salt, pepper, lemon, and optional veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,474 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Boil French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the ends and stalks of the beans and wash them well.

  2. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the beans.

  3. Cook until tender, about 12 to 18 minutes, then drain in a colander.

Dress and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the beans over low heat until dry and hot.

  2. Add the butter, white pepper, salt, and lemon juice, tossing gently for a few minutes.

  3. If the butter separates, add veal gravy or boiling water to combine.

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. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries flavour over the beans.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour.
French beans
Form the body of the dish, cooked until tender and then coated.

The step that matters

Adding the butter over low heat. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If the beans are too hot or the butter is added too quickly, it can separate into greasy fat and liquid instead of coating the beans smoothly, which is why the optional gravy or boiling water is used to bring it back together.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, lemon, veal):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, lemon, veal. 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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