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Bean Puree

A creamy puree of white soup beans, potatoes, kale, onions, milk, and butter, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and kale share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bean Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the beans overnight.

Make the puree

  1. Cook the beans until tender and mash through a fine sieve.

  2. Cook the potatoes, mash them, and run through a sieve, then combine with the beans.

  3. Dice the onions and stew with the kale in minimal water until tender, adding salt while cooking.

  4. Add the onion and kale mixture to the beans and potatoes.

  5. Stir in the milk and butter, season with salt, 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. Beans + kaletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  4. Potato + kaletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White soup beans
Provide the main body and starchy structure of the puree once cooked and mashed.
Potatoes
Add starch and smoothness, thickening the puree as it is mashed through a sieve.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the puree to a smooth consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel in the finished puree.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they stew until tender.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk and butter, then bring to a boil. Milk can scorch and separate if it is boiled too hard or left unattended on the heat, which can leave the puree grainy or burnt-tasting. Stirring constantly and heating gently keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the kale

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, milk, onion, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Kalethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, milk, onion, butter. 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.

More bean puree recipes

White 10Haricot 6Lima 6Green Flageolet 5Red 4White Haricot 3 See all 8 →

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