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Boiled Lentils. [Merjimek Pulaki.]

A simple lentil dish simmered with onions, parsley, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Lentils. [Merjimek Pulaki.]

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils and boil them in plain water for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Chop the onions and parsley coarsely.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped onions, parsley, and olive oil to the lentils.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Continue boiling on medium heat until the onions and lentils are very tender.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 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
Soften during boiling to form the tender body of the dish.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet and mellow as they cook.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives a richer mouthfeel.
Parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma to the cooked lentils.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the onions and lentils are very tender.. Lentils and onions only become fully soft after sustained simmering, as heat gelatinises the starch and breaks down cell walls. Stopping early leaves the lentils firm and the onions sharp.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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