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Puree of Baked Beans

A smooth puree made from baked beans, water, stock, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,080 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puree of Baked Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Pour boiling water over baked beans and stir until hot.

  2. Strain the mixture through a puree sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. Add soup stock or water and thicken with flour and butter.

  2. 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. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beans + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,799 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Baked beans
Provide the main body and bean flavor of the puree.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, cohesive texture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a silkier mouthfeel in the thickened puree.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens the puree; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and grainy texture.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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