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French Beans a LA Parisienne

A dish of boiled French beans sautéed with butter, onions, herbs, and cream, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash the beans and remove the strings from the back.

  2. Cut the beans into thin shreds.

  3. Boil the beans in plenty of salted water with a dusting of baking soda until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt half the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the onion for five minutes.

  3. Add the flour, cream, parsley, sweet herbs, nutmeg, and the remaining butter gradually, stirring well.

  4. Stir the cooked beans into the mixture.

  5. Reheat the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve on a fried crouton or with small croutons around the dish.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Beans
Form the main body of the dish and carry the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter into a binding sauce that clings to the beans.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Onion or shallot
Softens and adds a mild savory aroma to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour, cream and butter. Flour should be stirred in thoroughly and butter added gradually so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps or greasy separation.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, lemon, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg. 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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