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French Beans & LA Fran9ai.se

A dish of boiled French beans finished with butter, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Beans & LA Fran9ai.se

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the beans in salt and water over high heat to retain their color.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a stew-pan over heat to dry completely.

Finish and serve

  1. Once dry and hot, add the butter, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Keep moving the stew-pan without using a spoon to avoid breaking the beans.

  3. 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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

French beans
Form the main body of the dish, with a tender bite once boiled and dried.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries the flavor of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavor.

The step that matters

Drying the beans before adding butter. Beans that still hold surface water dilute the butter and lemon, so the sauce turns thin and watery instead of clinging to them. Drying them fully in the hot pan lets the butter emulsify and coat evenly.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon. 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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