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Puree of Dried Beans

A thick puree made from cooked dried beans, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, and milk, served with fried or roasted meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Puree of Dried Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cook the beans in water until very soft, then drain well, saving the water.

  2. Rub the beans through a puree sieve into a stewpan.

Make the puree

  1. Add butter or drippings, sugar, salt, pepper, and enough hot milk to make the puree like thick mush.

  2. Cook in a double boiler for one hour, stirring often and adding more milk if too dry.

Serve

  1. Heap the puree in the center of a hot platter and garnish with fried sausages, pork chops, mutton chops, or any fat meat.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Dried beans
Form the main body of the puree once cooked very soft and pushed through a sieve.
Butter or savory drippings
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Hot milk
Adds moisture so the puree thickens to a soft, mush-like texture.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savory flavors.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler for one hour, stirring often and adding more milk if too dry.. Gentle, indirect heat in a double boiler prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan. Stirring and adding milk keeps the starch-rich beans from drying out, thickening unevenly, or sticking.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, milk. 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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