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Puree of Beans

A creamy puree made from boiled Lima beans, butter, and cerealine flakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Puree of Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the beans in salted water until soft.

  3. Drain the beans and mash them.

Make the puree

  1. Dilute the mashed beans with some of the cooking liquid and press through a sieve.

  2. Return the puree to the saucepan and boil again, adding more liquid if necessary.

  3. Skim the surface and finish with 4 ounces of butter and 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley.

  4. Stir in 1 cup of cerealine flakes, season to taste, and boil for 2 more minutes.

  5. 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Dried lima beans
Form the main body of the puree once soaked, cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.
Cerealine flakes
Thickens the puree as it boils, giving it body and a firmer texture.

The step that matters

Press the beans through a sieve. Mashing alone leaves skins and lumps; sieving after dilution breaks down the starch-rich cells and skins, producing the smooth texture the puree depends on.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, clove, garlic, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, clove, garlic, parsley. 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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