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Puree of Dry White Beans, Pioneer Style

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

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

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

Make the puree

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

  2. 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 when cooked and pounded to give the soup its thick, body-filled texture.
Broth
Adds savoury depth to the liquid the beans cook and puree in.
Salt pork
Releases fat and salty flavour into the cooking liquid as it simmers with the beans.
Ham bone
Contributes slow-released savoury flavour to the soup during long, gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until everything is well cooked. Beans must be fully tender before pounding; undercooked beans stay grainy and will not purée smoothly through the colander. Gentle simmering also keeps the liquid from scorching on the pan base.

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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