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Vegetable Puree

A blended vegetable dish made by simmering carrots, turnip, celery, onions, cabbage, peas, and spinach, then sieving and reheating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Cut all the vegetables into small pieces.

Make the puree

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and sweat the vegetables until soft.

  2. Add the water and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook for 1½ hours.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine wire sieve.

  6. Reheat the puree in a clean saucepan before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the puree a smooth mouthfeel.
Onions
Sweeten and deepen the flavour as they soften during sweating in butter.
Green peas
Add natural sweetness and a bright green colour to the finished puree.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness, body and colour, thickening the puree as they break down.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and body, breaking down into the puree during long cooking.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a fine wire sieve. Long cooking softens the vegetables fully, but only sieving removes fibrous and skin particles and gives a smooth, even texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the puree grainy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, onion, cabbage, 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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