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Vegetable Puree

A thickened vegetable puree made with assorted vegetables, stock-fat, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and cauliflower work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 27 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop a large plateful of assorted vegetables, ensuring to include potatoes or beans for thickening.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, heat ½ cup of dripping or stock-fat until very hot.

  2. Add sliced onions and stir well to prevent burning.

  3. Once the onions are red, stir in 1 large spoonful of flour until it reaches the same color.

  4. Gradually stir in 1 pint of hot water along with salt and pepper, avoiding adding them too early to prevent burning.

  5. Add the remaining vegetables.

  6. Let them simmer for two hours, adding more hot water as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the mixture through a colander.

  2. Return it to the heat.

  3. Simmer until ready to 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsnip + cauliflowertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,096 recipes

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

  4. Parsnip + leektop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + potatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when cooked to thicken the puree and give it body.
Beans
Break down when cooked to thicken the puree and add body.
Flour
Cooked in the fat to form a roux that thickens the liquid.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the base.
Dripping or stock-fat
Carries heat and flavor into the vegetables and helps the flour cook.

The step that matters

Stirring the onions and flour. Onions can scorch in very hot fat, and flour that is not stirred constantly can clump or burn before the roux develops. Keep the heat controlled and stir steadily.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, potato, beans, parsnip, celery, leek):

  1. Lentilsabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Chickpeaabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, potato, beans, parsnip, celery, leek. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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