Skip to main content
Main

Lentils

A simple lentil dish simmered with optional salt pork and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lentils and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,221 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the lentils.

  2. Soak the lentils overnight or for up to 24 hours.

  3. Drain the water and add 4 cups of fresh water. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt.

  4. Add a slice of salt pork and an onion if desired.

Cook

  1. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a fireless cooker and cook for 6 to 8 hours, or simmer slowly on the stove.

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. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lentils + porktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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, softening as they absorb water during soaking and cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering slowly for the long cook. Keeping the lentils at a gentle simmer or in a low fireless cooker lets them soften evenly and hold their shape. Boiling hard can break them apart and leave the outside mushy before the inside is tender.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, pork):

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, pork. 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.

More lentils recipes

Boiled 17Stewed 10Curried 6Baked 5Stewed with Bacon 4and Rice 3

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes