Name: To Prepare Haricots with Gravy
Ingredients: haricots (green beans); good gravy; butter; chopped parsley

Why it works: Green beans and parsley work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 70 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Prepare Haricots with Gravy

Ingredients

haricots (green beans)
good gravy
butter
chopped parsley

Directions

Pour a little good gravy over the haricots.
Simmer for 15 minutes.
Add a piece of butter and stir to finish.
For a cream version, replace gravy with béchamel sauce.
For sautéed haricots, cook them in butter and season.
Finish with chopped parsley.
For 'à la Lyonnaise', fry with butter and chopped onion.

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.

Green beans + parsleytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together70 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Green beans + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together154 recipes

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