Name: Beans, Broad
Ingredients: young broad beans; 2 ounces butter; chopped parsley

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 ↓

Beans, Broad

Ingredients

young broad beans
2 ounces butter
chopped parsley

Directions

Prepare

Shell enough young broad beans to fill an entree dish.

Cook and serve

Boil the beans in boiling water for about 20 minutes until tender.
Drain the beans.
In a stewpan, combine the beans with 2 ounces of butter and a little chopped parsley.
Serve hot.

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.

Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young broad beans: Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the beans as they are finished.