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French Beans, D LA Ponlette

A dish of French beans cooked in the liquor they were boiled in, seasoned with salt, egg yolks, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

French Beans, D LA Ponlette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the liquor over the beans and add salt.

  2. Stir on the fire for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add to the sauce, but do not let it boil.

  4. Melt the butter and add it gradually.

  5. Chop the parsley fine and add it.

Finish and serve

  1. Put in the beans, stir well until thoroughly hot, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the liquor into a smooth, creamy sauce as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture, emulsifying into the sauce when added gradually.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a bit of green flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the yolks without boiling the sauce. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle at higher temperatures, so the sauce must stay below boiling to remain smooth and thickened.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, parsley. 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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