A smooth paste, usually of vegetables or fruit, made by sieving, milling or beating in a blender.
Before blenders and food processors were invented, purees were made by repeatedly pressing cooked vegetables through a sieve until they acquired a texture like that of mashed potatoes. Although this process does indeed reduce carrots or peas or parsnips to a kind of “pure” state one in which the vegetable’s essence is released, like a soul, from the physical constraints of shape and form the word puree actually has no relation to the word pure. Instead, puree probably derives from porrum, a Latin word meaning leek, an onion like vegetable. In Late Latin, porrum gave rise to porrata, meaning made with leeks, a word that evolved into the Old French name for a mashed-leek dish, poree. In the fourteenth century, poree was adopted by English as porray and its meaning widened to include dishes made from any strained vegetable, not just leeks; in Scotland, for example, porray—or as it is called there, purry is made from chopped cabbage and oatmeal. Meanwhile, in Old French, poree also developed a variant spelling, puree, first used as the name of a dish of mashed leeks and almond-milk, and later used to denote any sort of mashed and strained food; English adopted this form of the word puree in the early eighteenth century.
Immerse yourself in the realm of culinary refinement with the concept of purée—a texture achieved by meticulously pounding, sieving, or blending fruits, vegetables, meats, or fish, typically after the cooking process, resulting in a smooth and finely divided pulp. Additionally, the term “purée” is employed to describe a delectable soup that involves the process of sieving or blending vegetables along with the flavorful cooking liquid, culminating in a harmonious blend known as a purée soup.