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French Beans En Allhmette

A dish of green beans cooked with brandy, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,127 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

French Beans En Allhmette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the beans, then blanch them in boiling water.

  2. Transfer the beans to cold water and cut off the ends.

Cook and glaze

  1. Boil the beans again with brandy until tender, then drain them.

  2. Dip the beans in butter and fry until lightly colored.

  3. While hot, sprinkle sugar over the beans and glaze them.

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. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  5. Green beans + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Green beans
Provide the main body of the dish, cooked until tender while keeping their shape.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor as the beans simmer, while the liquid evaporates.
Butter
Carries flavor and promotes light browning as the beans fry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and forms a glaze on the hot beans.

The step that matters

Frying in butter until lightly colored. Sugars and proteins in the beans brown when heated in fat, so over-frying can scorch the butter and make the beans bitter, while too little heat leaves them pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, butter, sugar. 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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