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French Beans a LA Poulette

A simple dish of boiled French beans topped with poulette sauce, butter, lemon juice, and puff paste flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,474 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Beans a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the French beans in plenty of water with a handful of coarse sea salt.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 2-3 spoonfuls of poulette sauce, a piece of fresh butter, and a little lemon juice.

  2. Do not let the sauce boil.

  3. Garnish with flowers of puff paste 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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Beans + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

French beans
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and served whole.
Poulette sauce
Provides a creamy, savory coating that carries flavor over the beans.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil. Boiling an egg-based sauce like poulette can curdle or separate it, leaving a grainy texture and a broken butter emulsion. Keeping it gently warm preserves its smooth, cohesive consistency.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sauce, butter. 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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