Name: New Haricot Beans
Ingredients: 1 pound fresh haricot beans, shelled; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 bunch parsley; 1 onion; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; Juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

New Haricot Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beans

Boil water in a pot and add the salt, parsley, onion, and butter.
Add the haricot beans and cook until tender, about 10-14 minutes.
Drain the beans in a colander.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, mix the chopped parsley, butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
Pour the mixture over the hot beans and serve immediately.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans: Provide the main body and starchy, creamy texture of the dish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness that coats the beans and carries flavour.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour and balances richness.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, butter, pepper, lemon. 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.