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Green Bean Budding

A creamy green bean dish with cream, egg yolks, and optional spinach, boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Green Bean Budding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

  1. Boil the green beans until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the beans until smooth, adding pepper and salt.

Make the creamed mixture

  1. Mix in the cream and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Boil the mixture in a basin for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley sauce.

  2. For color, add boiled and chopped spinach 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. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Green beans + spinachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

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

  3. Green beans + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together369 recipes

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

  4. Cream + spinachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green beans
Provide the main bulk and body once cooked and mashed into a smooth base.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the mash a richer, softer texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it thicken and set when heated.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture in a basin for one hour. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if they get too hot or boil hard for a long time. Keep the heat gentle and steady so the mixture stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

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