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Dessert

Lentilles À LA Maître D’hôtel

A French lentil stew cooked with bouquet garni, onions, carrots, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lentilles À LA Maître D’hôtel

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 the lentils thoroughly to remove any dirt or sand.

  2. Soak the lentils in water.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the soaked lentils, water, bouquet garni, onions, and carrots.

  2. Cook for at least 2 hours until tender.

  3. Drain the lentils and return them to the pot.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley or herbs.

  2. Sauté the lentils briefly and 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, creamy texture when cooked.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking water.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and flavor to the cooking liquid.
Parsley or mixed herbs
Add fresh, green aroma that brightens the finished lentils.

The step that matters

Cook for at least 2 hours until tender. Lentils need sustained simmering to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm and chalky, because the starch inside gelatinizes only when the grains are heated long enough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, clove, carrot, pepper, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, clove, carrot, pepper, parsley. 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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