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Dey White Beans Foe Gaenituee

A creamy puree of cooked white beans, butter, onion, and optional sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Dey White Beans Foe Gaenituee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Drain the cooked beans.

  2. Place the drained beans in a saucepan with butter, season the beans with salt and pepper, and toss the beans over medium heat.

Make the purée

  1. In a separate saucepan, lightly fry the chopped onion.

  2. Add the drained beans and Allemande or Cream sauce to the onion, then season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the purée to the saucepan to keep warm.

  5. Before serving, stir in a piece of butter until melted.

  6. Add chopped parsley or your choice of sauce 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White beans
Form the bulk of the purée, giving body and a smooth, thick texture once sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the beans and the finished purée.
White onion
Contributes savory sweetness and aroma when lightly fried before being added.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pushing the cooked beans and onion through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins, producing a smooth purée; skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy texture.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, butter, pepper, cream. 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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