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An Excellent Receipt for French Beans a LA Franqaise

A dish of tender beans simmered in a butter, flour, veal gravy, egg yolk, and lemon juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

An Excellent Receipt for French Beans a LA Franqaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Prepare the beans.

  2. Boil them until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes, then drain well.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and keep stirring until lightly browned.

  3. Add salt and pepper.

  4. Gradually pour in the veal gravy or cream.

  5. Toss the beans in the sauce until heated through.

  6. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  7. Stir in the lemon juice just 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  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. Beans + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor while the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth sauce when cooked and stirred.
Veal gravy or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding body and savory or rich flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when stirred in without boiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add them off the heat or over low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, veal, egg, 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.

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