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To Fricassee French Beans

A creamy, nutmeg-flavored French bean dish cooked in a sauce of cream and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fricassee French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the beans until tender, then strain off the water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the beans with cream, flour, and nutmeg.

  3. Heat the mixture 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.

  1. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beans + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together267 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 body and bulk of the fricassee.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the mixture body.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that complements the cream.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture before serving. Once flour is stirred into cream, it must heat long enough for the starch to swell and thicken; heating too gently leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce, while overheating can make cream separate.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, nutmeg. 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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