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To Dress French Beans

A warm side dish of French beans tossed with butter, egg yolks, parsley, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Dress French Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Trim the French beans and boil them in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the beans and set them aside to dry.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat a little sauce tournee.

  2. Whisk in the beaten egg yolks, parsley, butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice until hot.

  3. Alternatively, place the beans in a stew-pan, add butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Shake the stew-pan frequently to mix, avoiding the use of a spoon.

  5. If the butter does not mix well, add ½ teaspoon of sauce tournee.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the dressing as they heat, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery dressing.
French beans
Form the main body of the dish, carrying the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the heat is too high they scramble and curdle. Keep the mixture warm and whisk constantly so the dressing becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

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