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French Beans De Dijon

Sautéed French beans with butter, parsley, shallots, thyme, lettuce, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Beans De Dijon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the herb butter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add chopped parsley, shallots, thyme, lettuce, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer the mixture well.

Cook the beans

  1. Add the French beans and cook until heated through.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the herbs and adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
French beans
Form the main body of the dish and absorb the buttery herb coating.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like savor that deepens as they soften.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery herb mixture.
Lettuce
Softens into the sauce, adding body and moisture to the herb mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture well. Simmering long enough softens the shallots and lettuce and lets the sharp raw flavors mellow into the butter. Too brief a simmer leaves the mixture harsh and watery-tasting.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, shallot, thyme, pepper, nutmeg, 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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