Name: A Green-bean Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups old green beans; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ½ cup cream; 1 egg yolk; 1 tablespoon spinach juice (optional); 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ cup parsley; bacon (for serving)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Green-bean Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

Boil and blanch the green beans.
Beat the beans in a mortar with pepper, salt, cream, and egg yolk.
Add spinach juice for color if desired.
Pour the mixture into a basin.

Cook and serve

Boil for 1 hour.
Melt butter and mix with parsley.
Pour the mixture over the pudding before serving.
Serve with bacon.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Green beans + spinachtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Old green beans: Provide the main body and flavor of the pudding.
Egg yolk: Binds the beaten beans and cream so the pudding sets firm when cooked.
Cream: Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a smooth, tender texture.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the parsley topping.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (green beans, pepper, cream, egg, butter, parsley):

Potatofits better
Spinachthe original
Asparagusfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, pepper, cream, 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.