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Vegetable Puree

A blended vegetable mixture of carrots, turnips, onions, celery, leeks, lettuce, and cabbage, cooked with butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the carrots.

  2. Wash, peel, and slice the turnips and onions.

  3. Wash and quarter the celery and leeks.

  4. Wash and quarter the lettuce and cabbage.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add all the vegetables.

  2. Cook the vegetables over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add 3 quarts of cold water, bring to a boil, skim the surface, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.

Strain and serve

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin using a wooden spoon.

  2. Return the puree to the saucepan and warm it over low heat.

  3. Serve the puree in a hot soup tureen or basin, with toasted or fried bread cut into dice.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the puree with fat and carries flavour as the vegetables cook.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body, thickening the puree when pureed through a sieve.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they soften in butter.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like flavour and soft texture to the puree.
Turnips
Add earthy flavour and body to the puree.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a fine sieve breaks down their cell walls, producing a smooth, even texture. Skipping this or using a coarse sieve leaves the puree grainy and fibrous.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, leek, lettuce, cabbage, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, leek, lettuce, cabbage, 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.

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