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French Beans a LA Francaise

A sautéed bean dish with butter, flour, veal gravy or cream, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Beans a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans in water until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes, then drain well.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook gently until lightly browned.

  3. Add salt and pepper, then gradually pour in the veal gravy or cream, stirring continuously.

  4. Toss the beans in the sauce until heated through.

  5. Remove from heat and quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks and lemon juice.

  6. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the base of the roux, adding richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked in the melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Veal gravy or cream
Liquid that, combined with the roux, forms the body of the sauce and adds richness.
Egg yolks
Stirred in off the heat to thicken and enrich the sauce without curdling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and curdle. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in lets them thicken the sauce gently and smoothly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, veal, egg, 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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