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Beans, French, Boiled

Boiled French beans seasoned with salt, butter or oil, parsley, pepper, and optional nutmeg, garlic, or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beans, French, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather fresh French beans and remove tips and side strings.

  2. For larger beans, cut into thin slanting strips and rinse in cold water.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil salted water and add the beans; cook for 15-30 minutes depending on age.

  2. Strain the beans using a hot colander and serve on the hottest plates.

  3. Mix in butter or oil, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper after draining.

  4. Optionally, add a pinch of nutmeg or rub the saucepan with garlic.

  5. Serve with a border of rice or macaroni and pour white sauce over if desired.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Form the main vegetable and bulk of the dish, cooked until tender in salted water.
Butter or oil
Adds richness and carries flavour across the beans after draining.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavour to the finished beans.

The step that matters

Cook for 15-30 minutes depending on age. Beans toughen or stay fibrous if undercooked and turn dull and mushy if overcooked. Younger beans need less time, so checking tenderness during cooking helps achieve the right texture.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, butter, parsley, pepper, clove, garlic, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, butter, parsley, pepper, clove, garlic, 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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