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Puree of Dry White Beans, Pioneer Style

A creamy puree made from dry white beans, cooked with pork, ham bone, onions, carrots, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,443 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Puree of Dry White Beans, Pioneer Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Wash and pick the beans, then soak them overnight in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Drain the beans and place them in a saucepan with fresh water, broth, salt pork, ham bone, onions, and carrots.

  2. Cover and cook slowly until everything is well cooked.

  3. Remove the pork, ham bone, and carrots, then pound the soup through a fine colander.

  4. Return the soup to the saucepan, season with salt and pepper, and add butter.

Serve

  1. Cut the pork into small pieces, fry them, and add to the soup when serving along with fried bread crumbs.

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

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

Dry white beans
Break down into a thick, smooth puree that forms the body of the soup.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Broth
Provides the liquid base and savory depth for the soup.
Onions
Build aromatic sweetness and savory flavor as they soften in the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Pound the soup through a fine colander. Pressing the cooked beans and vegetables through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls and removes skins and fibers, which gives the puree its smooth, even texture.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pork, ham, onion, pepper, butter, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pork, ham, onion, pepper, butter, bread. 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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