The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Technique

Mashing & puréeing

114 dishes across 79 chapters · 0 marked cooked

From the Lexicon, Blenders: Immersion, High-Speed & Food Processor

Three machines, three physics, endless substitution errors. IMMERSION (stick) BLENDER: purées IN the pot: soups without lava transfers (the soup wing's blend-smooth entries assume one), mayo in 60 seconds (the one-jar immersion-mayo trick), sauce rescues; the restaurant version is a boat motor. HIGH-SPEED BLENDER (Vitamix-class): the smoothness ceiling: velvet soups, nut butters, silky salsas and curry bases (heat from friction is real: it will warm and even cook contents; also the reason it emulsifies like a champion). FOOD PROCESSOR: the CHOPPER: pulse-control texture (pesto with identity, pie dough's butter pebbles, falafel's coarse grind, shredding discs at volume) where blenders would liquefy. The sorting rule: liquids and smoothness → blender; solids and texture → processor; in-pot and quick → stick. And the professional footnote: the blender's whirl adds AIR: sauces that must stay glossy-dense (the mortar entry's argument) sometimes want the pound or the pass instead.

Read it in the Lexicon →

How to tell it is going right

  • Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
  • No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
  • The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
  • Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
  • The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.

Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.

This technique, on camera Search films of mashing & puréeing

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