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Red Lentil Soup

A spicy lentil soup made with ghee, onion, peppercorns, bay leaves, stock, lentils, parsley, chilies, ginger, and salt.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,597 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Heat ghee (or oil) over low heat.

  2. Add onion and cook until it softens, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add peppercorns and bay leaves and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Add stock, 1 cup water, lentils, parsley, chilies, and salt.

  5. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  6. When the soup begins to boil, add ginger and continue to cook and stir for 10 minutes.

  7. Serve hot. Lentils should be soft.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,597 recipes

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

  2. Lentils + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together25,834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lentils + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

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

What each ingredient does

Red lentils
Break down as they cook, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the base flavour of the soup.
Vegetable stock
Provides the cooking liquid that hydrates the lentils and carries the flavour.
Ghee or vegetable oil
Carries flavour from the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Cook the lentils until soft. Red lentils must simmer long enough to fully soften; if they are underdone the soup stays grainy and thin. Cooking gently with enough liquid lets the starch release and thicken the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, onion, lentils, ginger):

  1. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  2. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  3. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, onion, lentils, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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