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White Beans a LA Maitre

A simple dish of white beans cooked with butter, parsley, pepper, sea salt, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

White Beans a LA Maitre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. If beans are dry, soak them in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the soaked beans in cold water, replenishing with more cold water as needed.

  3. Once tender, drain the beans.

Finish and serve

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter and add the chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the drained beans and gently move the pan without stirring.

  3. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the beans and serve hot.

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

White beans
Form the body of the dish, becoming soft and creamy when cooked until tender.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel that coats the beans.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the beans.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans until tender. Dried beans need enough time in simmering water to soften fully; undercooked beans stay firm and chalky, and salt or acid added too early can slow softening, so the beans are only seasoned after they are tender.

Swap the beans

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, 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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