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French Beans, À LA Maitre d’Hotel

A sauté of French beans with butter, parsley, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Beans, À LA Maitre d’Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the beans by cutting them into thin strips or lozenge shapes.

  2. Boil the beans in a large saucepan of salted water for 15 minutes if young, or 20 to 25 minutes if old.

  3. Keep the beans hot after boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the hot beans with melted butter, chopped parsley, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Shake the pan over a brisk fire, mix well, and serve hot after 8 minutes.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Provide the main body and texture of the dish once boiled until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that carries the flavour over the beans.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour and balances richness.

The step that matters

Boil the beans to the right tenderness. Young and old beans need different boiling times, so using the wrong time leaves beans either fibrous or mushy. Boiling in well-salted water seasons them from within as they cook.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, 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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