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Puree of Dry Red Beans, Conde

A thick puree made from soaked dry red beans, cooked with vegetables, ham bone, and broth, then blended and served with rice or bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 Dry Red Beans, Conde

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Pick and wash the beans, then soak them in 2 quarts of fresh water for 3 hours.

  2. Drain the beans and place them in a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of broth.

  3. Add the faggot of parsley, carrots, onions, ham bone, and salt.

Cook and puree

  1. Cover and cook slowly until the beans are thoroughly done.

  2. Remove the ham bone, faggot, onions, and carrots, then pound the soup through a colander.

  3. Add 2 quarts of game broth and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Return the puree to the saucepan and heat until boiling, then reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim the surface, then stir in the butter before serving.

  2. Serve with boiled rice or 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beans + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry red beans
Form the main body of the puree once softened and pushed through a sieve.
Broth
Adds savoury liquid that carries the flavour of the beans into the puree.
Butter
Stirred in at the end to add richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Ham bone
Releases savoury, smoky flavour into the cooking liquid as it simmers with the beans.

The step that matters

Rubbing the puree through a fine sieve. Beans hold tough skins and fibres that stay gritty unless the cooked mass is pressed through a sieve. Pushing it through fully breaks down the solids, giving the smooth texture the dish depends on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, parsley, leek, celery, carrot, clove, ham):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, parsley, leek, celery, carrot, clove, ham. 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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