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French Beans Fricasseed

A creamy French bean fricassée made with white gravy, cream, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the French beans until almost tender, then strain them.

Make the fricassée

  1. In a stewpan, combine the beans with the white gravy.

  2. Add the cream and thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

  3. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 provide its vegetable texture.
White gravy
Supplies the liquid that carries the beans and forms the sauce base.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with butter, giving it body.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked in fat, as a roux or kneaded butter, before or while it meets liquid; otherwise it clumps and leaves a raw floury taste. Simmering afterward lets the starch fully swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

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