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Potage De Purée De Lentilles a LA Conti

A lentil purée soup with ham, partridge, vegetables, and sautéed croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage De Purée De Lentilles a LA Conti

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Rinse and wash the lentils.

  2. Place lentils in a pot with ham, partridge, carrot, turnip, onion, leeks, and celery.

  3. Add enough broth to cover the ingredients.

Simmer and purée

  1. Skim the pot and let it simmer for 3 hours.

  2. Remove the roots, partridge, and ham.

  3. Pass the lentils through a fine sieve.

  4. Add the prepared broth to the purée and bring to a boil.

  5. Clarify the purée by skimming off foam and fat.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup tureen with sautéed croutons.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lentils + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Lentils
Break down when passed through a sieve to form the thick body of the purée.
Partridge
Flavors the broth during the long simmer; removed before puréeing.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the simmering broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic savory depth to the simmering broth.
Butter
Browns the croutons, adding richness and a toasted aroma.

The step that matters

Clarify the purée by skimming off foam and fat. Foam and fat rise to the surface as the soup simmers and can make the purée look cloudy and taste greasy. Skimming them off carefully keeps the soup smooth and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, ham, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, ham, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, butter. 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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