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Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

A lentil puree soup with onions, parsley, carrots, celery, and game broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 ↓

Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the water.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Add the onions, parsley, and carrots.

  6. Season with salt.

  7. Cover and simmer until the lentils are tender.

  8. Remove the parsley, carrots, and onions.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the soup to the saucepan.

  3. Add game broth to reach the desired consistency.

  4. Heat the soup, stirring with a wooden spoon until it boils.

  5. Let it simmer for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

Add the celery and serve

  1. Prepare the braised celery separately.

  2. Cut the celery into scallops.

  3. Add the celery to the soup before serving.

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 + carrottop 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. Parsley + celerytop 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. 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
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup into a smooth puree.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and body to the flavour of the soup.
Game broth
Adds depth of meaty flavour and adjusts the final thickness of the soup.
Braised celery
Adds tender texture and a mild savoury flavour as a finishing garnish.

The step that matters

Straining through a fine sieve. Lentils must be fully tender before straining, since undercooked lentils stay grainy and will not pass smoothly through the sieve, leaving a coarse texture in the puree.

Swap the onion

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

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

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