Name: French Beans, Tinned
Ingredients: 1 can tinned French beans; 2 teaspoons sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter or 2 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon chopped blanched parsley; juice of ½ lemon (optional)

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, Tinned

Ingredients

1 can tinned French beans
2 teaspoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter or 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped blanched parsley
juice of ½ lemon (optional)

Directions

Heat the can of French beans in cold water until boiling.
Boil the beans for 5 minutes.
Drain the beans and return them to the dish.
Add sugar, salt, and butter or olive oil, then add chopped parsley.
Toss the beans gently.
Squeeze the juice of half a lemon before serving.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,474 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans: Provide the main bulk and texture of the dish.
Butter or olive oil: Adds fat for richness and helps the beans feel glossy and coated.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the salt and lemon.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the beans.

“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.