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French Beans a LA Cream for a Dish

A creamy side dish of young French beans cooked with butter, egg yolks, cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 a LA Cream for a Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cut the young beans into slips.

  2. Boil the beans in plenty of water with salt until tender, then drain them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  3. Once the butter is hot, add the vinegar and the beans.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks and cream mixture, simmer for 5 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning or curdling.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Beans + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Young beans
Provide the main vegetable body of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and butter into a smooth, coating sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the beans a silky texture and flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the egg yolks into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a light acidity that brightens the rich butter and cream.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks curdle if they overheat or sit still over direct heat. Keep the heat low and stir constantly during the 5-minute simmer so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of scrambling.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cream, vinegar. 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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