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French Beans

A sautéed French bean dish flavored with butter, ketchup, mushroom pickle, white wine, onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut and string the beans, then cut them into three pieces.

  2. Soak the beans in salt water for 15 minutes, then dry them.

Cook and season

  1. Fry the beans until brown, then pour off the fat.

  2. Add ½ cup boiling water to the pan.

  3. Stir in the butter, ketchup, mushroom pickle, white wine, onion, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir for a few minutes, then add the beans.

  5. Shake the pan until everything is well mixed, remove the onion, and serve.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Beans + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Form the main body of the dish, browning in the pan for texture and flavour.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavours through the beans.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Mushroom pickle
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the beans until brown. Browning the beans in fat develops deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pouring off the excess fat afterward keeps the finished dish from being greasy, and adding the boiling water and sauce too early would stop the browning.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, flour, ketchup, mushroom, white wine, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, flour, ketchup, mushroom, white wine, onion. 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.

More french beans recipes

Boiled 29Pickled 12Preserved 9Plain 4Stewed 4Creamed 3 See all 54 →

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