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French Beans, a LA Creme

A creamy side dish of French beans cooked with butter, egg yolks, cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French Beans, a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut the beans into 2‑inch pieces and soak them in water with salt.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add salt, and cook the beans until tender, ensuring they retain their green color.

  3. Drain the beans and set aside.

Make the creamed beans

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream, then add to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and the cooked beans, simmer for 5 minutes, stirring gently to prevent burning.

  4. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Beans + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 vegetable body and green color of the dish.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and butter into a smooth, custard-like coating when gently heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the egg yolks into a silky sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidic note that balances the richness of the butter, yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Simmering the egg-yolk sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Keeping the heat low and stirring gently keeps the sauce smooth while the beans warm through.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, cream, vinegar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, vinegar. 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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