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French Beans with Fine Herbs

A side dish of boiled green beans tossed with butter, parsley, eschalots, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 with Fine Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans until tender.

  2. Drain them in a colander.

Make the butter sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter with the chopped parsley and finely chopped eschalots.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the beans and toss to combine.

  4. Serve with or without croutons arranged around the dish.

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. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
The main vegetable, giving the dish its body and bulk.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and coats the beans with a silky finish.
Parsley
Fresh herb that adds a bright, green aroma.
Eschalots
Mild onion flavour that adds aroma and a gentle savoury sharpness.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens the buttery flavour and balances richness.

The step that matters

Boil the beans until tender. Beans should be cooked only until tender, because overcooking breaks down their cell walls and fades their green colour, leaving them soft and dull.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, 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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