Purée vs Purées

Herb C.C1Kwiziq community member

Purée vs Purées

In the sentence: ¨Je vais acheter des pommes de terre et des patates douces pour préparer deux types de purée.¨, I used ¨purées¨ to match the plural established by ¨types¨. 

Is ¨purée¨ always a singular noun?

Asked 1 year ago
CélineNative French expert teacher in KwiziqCorrect answer

Bonjour Herb,

You are correct! "Purées" has now been added as part of the correct answers.

Having looked at what L'Académie française recommends, we found out that there isn't a "rule" as both are accepted:

deux types de purées -> there are 2 distinctive mash

deux types de purées -> not countable / talking about the dish

See here:

Nombre du complément d’un nom collectif

sorte de, type de, forme de + singulier/pluriel

I hope this is helpful.

Bonne journée !

Maarten K.C1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor

I think this is the same as in English - I wouldn’t say ‘2 types of purées’, or for another example ‘I saw 2 types of cars’, in English either.

It refers to 2 versions of one thing. An exception could be when the ‘one thing’ is usually or invariably referred to in the plural.

Herb C. asked:

Purée vs Purées

In the sentence: ¨Je vais acheter des pommes de terre et des patates douces pour préparer deux types de purée.¨, I used ¨purées¨ to match the plural established by ¨types¨. 

Is ¨purée¨ always a singular noun?

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