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Kidney Beans Another Way — — Haricots Verts À LA Lyonnaise

A sautéed green bean dish with onions, parsley, scallions, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Kidney Beans Another Way — — Haricots Verts À LA Lyonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onions

  1. Cut the onions into half rings.

  2. Heat oil in a frying pan and add the onions; cook until they begin to brown.

Finish the beans

  1. Add the cooked haricots verts and fry with the onions.

  2. Stir in the chopped parsley, scallions, salt, and pepper; cook for a couple more turns.

  3. Boil a little vinegar in the pan and pour it over the beans before serving.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + green beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together334 recipes

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

  5. Green beans + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together70 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

Onions
Browning in the hot oil builds sweetness and savoury depth for the dish.
Haricots verts (green beans)
Form the body of the dish, absorbing flavour from the onions and oil.
Oil
Carries heat to the onions and coats the beans, adding richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery, savoury onions and beans.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions need enough heat and time to take on colour; pale, under-browned onions give little sweetness, so the dish tastes flat. Stop once they just begin to brown to avoid bitterness from scorching.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, pepper, vinegar. 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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