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French Beans

A simple boiled French bean dish seasoned with salt, broth, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. String the French beans and cut them into four or eight pieces.

  2. Soak them in saltwater.

Cook

  1. When the water boils, add the beans and some salt.

  2. Serve immediately to preserve their green color.

  3. Alternatively, when half-cooked, drain the water and add 2 tablespoons of strained broth.

  4. Finish with a little cream, butter, and flour.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and carry its green color and texture.
Broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor when the beans finish cooking.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the finished beans.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a glossy finish.
Flour
Helps thicken the cream and butter into a light coating.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after cooking. Green chlorophyll breaks down with prolonged heat and time, turning beans dull olive. Cooking briefly and serving right away keeps the bright green color.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

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