Name: French Beans
Ingredients: ½ lb butter; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; juice of 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons chopped and parboiled parsley; 2 chopped shallots

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the beans as usual.
In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat with nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon juice, parsley, and shallots.
Add the beans to the saucepan and gently shake to coat.
Serve with or without croutons 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

Swap the shallot

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

Shallotthe original
Carrotfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.