Name: Broad or Windsor Beans
Ingredients: 1 peck (about 8 quarts) of broad or Windsor beans; Salted water; Parsley sauce

Why it works: Beans and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Broad or Windsor Beans

Ingredients

1 peck (about 8 quarts) of broad or Windsor beans
Salted water
Parsley sauce

Directions

Prepare

Shell the beans and put them into boiling salted water.

Cook and serve

Boil rapidly until tender, about 15 minutes for very young beans or 20 to 25 minutes for moderate-sized beans.
Drain the beans well in a colander.
Serve the beans with a boat of parsley sauce on the side.

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.

Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Beans + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,184 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans: Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and mild when boiled.
Parsley sauce: Adds a smooth, herbaceous coating that moistens the beans at the table.