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Haricot Beans, Puree of

A puree of haricot beans cooked with carrot, celery, onion, sugar, and butter, served with bread and boiling cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Haricot Beans, Puree of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Soak the beans overnight in water with baking soda.

  2. The next morning, boil the beans in 3 quarts of water with carrot, celery, and onion until tender.

  3. Remove the vegetables and pound the beans in a mortar.

  4. Rub the pounded beans through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Serve with fried or toasted bread and a drizzle of boiling cream.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Provide the starchy base that softens and thickens into a smooth puree.
Baking soda
Helps the beans soften during soaking and cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to balance the earthy beans.

The step that matters

Rubbing the beans through a sieve. Beans must be fully tender before pounding and sieving; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not pass smoothly, leaving a coarse puree instead of a silky one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, carrot, celery, sugar, butter, bread, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, carrot, celery, sugar, butter, bread, 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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