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Small Lentil

A lentil soup made with small lentils, water, salt, onions, carrots, celery, butter, 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 ↓

Small Lentil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils in lukewarm water.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine lentils, water, salt, onions, carrots, and celery.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim, and then simmer until tender.

Finish

  1. Drain the lentils and remove the vegetables.

  2. Add butter and chopped parsley, seasoning to taste.

  3. Toss everything together, adding broth if needed.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory aromatic base as they soften in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Lentils need a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. A rolling boil can break the skins and turn the texture mushy, while under-cooking leaves them firm and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, celery, butter, 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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