Name: Haricots Verts. — French Beans
Ingredients: 1 pound French beans; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse pepper; 2 tablespoons chopped blanched 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 ↓

Haricots Verts. — French Beans

Ingredients

1 pound French beans
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon coarse pepper
2 tablespoons chopped blanched parsley

Directions

Prepare the beans

Wash and trim the ends of the beans.
Boil the beans in a pot of salted water until soft.
Drain the beans and transfer them to cold water.

Finish and serve

Melt butter in a saucepan, then add the beans, pepper, and parsley.
Stir and cook over heat until thickened, then serve hot.

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).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French beans: Form the main body of the dish and absorb the butter and seasoning.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour across the beans and helping them glaze.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a bright herbal flavour to the finished beans.

The step that matters

Stir and cook until thickened. Cooking the beans in butter over heat lets the liquid reduce and cling to the beans; stopping too early leaves a watery coating, while overcooking makes them dull and mushy.

Swap the beans

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

Chickpeafits better
Black-eyed peafits about as well
Walnutfits about as well
Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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.

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Haricots Verts. — French Beans