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Vegetable Puree

A thick puree of peas, beans, carrots, celery, potatoes, milk, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Vegetable Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the peas and beans overnight.

Cook and mash

  1. Boil the peas, beans, and vegetables in as little water as possible until tender.

  2. Mash the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the milk, celery salt, butter, and chopped parsley.

  2. If desired, add more milk.

  3. Bring to a boil and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Peas + green beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried peas
Provide the bulk of the puree and its thick, starchy body once softened and mashed.
Potatoes
Add starch that helps the puree thicken and turn smooth when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the finished puree.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the puree to a smooth, creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Cook in as little water as possible. Using minimal water keeps the vegetables from becoming waterlogged and diluting their flavor. Cooking until fully tender ensures the mash sieves smoothly with no grainy bits.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, carrot, celery, milk, potato, butter, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, celery, milk, potato, butter, parsley. 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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