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Haricots Blanc a LA Maitre d’hOTEL

A French bean soup with white haricot beans, herbs, carrot, onion, and butter, served with optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Put the white haricot beans into boiling water with salt and let them stew until half done.

  2. Strain the beans through a sieve and return them to the pot with stock, carrot, sweet herbs, and onion.

  3. Cook until fully tender.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate pan, mix butter with chopped chives and parsley.

  2. Add the cooked beans to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and serve with a spoonful of vinegar or verjuice if desired.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

White haricot beans
Form the body of the soup, becoming soft and creamy as they cook through.
Stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury flavour for the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onion
Contributes savoury, aromatic sweetness to the cooking liquid.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until fully tender. Beans that are undercooked stay firm and starchy, so the soup tastes grainy. Salt added early in the stew helps the skins soften evenly, and the beans need full cooking before they are puréed or combined with the butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, onion, butter, chive, parsley, pepper):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, onion, butter, chive, parsley, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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