Name: Green Flageolet Beans, with String Beans
Ingredients: 1 cup Flageolet beans; 1 cup string beans; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; 2 tablespoons cream sauce; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Flageolet Beans, with String Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

Boil the flageolet beans and drain them.
Boil the string beans cut into diamond shapes and drain them.

Combine and serve

In a flat saucepan, combine both beans with butter, salt, and pepper.
Toss over heat until warmed through.
Add cream sauce and chopped parsley before serving.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flageolet beans: Provide the main body and creamy texture of the dish.
String beans: Add crisp-tender texture and fresh green contrast to the creamy beans.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as the beans warm.
Cream sauce: Adds moisture and a rich, smooth coating over the beans.

Swap the beans

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

Pistachiofits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Beansthe original
Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, sauce, parsley. 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.