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French Beans a LA Maitre d’Hotel

A dish of boiled French beans in a white sauce with butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, lemon juice, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

French Beans a LA Maitre d’Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and cut the French beans into strips, then wash and drain them.

  2. Boil the beans in a pot of salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white sauce, butter, chopped parsley, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice. Stir well.

  2. Add the drained beans to the sauce and mix thoroughly.

  3. Serve hot with fried croutons.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 a tender, slightly firm bite once cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy coating to the beans.
White sauce or cream
Forms a creamy base that clings to the beans and carries the other flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Chopped parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the beans well before mixing. Excess water dilutes the butter and white sauce, so it cannot coat the beans properly and the dish turns watery.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, lemon. 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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