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Soup

Lentil Soup with Spinach and Turnips

A lentil soup containing onions, celery, turnips, cumin, coriander, spinach and lemon, served with lemon quarters or sumac.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and turnip work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 664 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. In a food processor with a metal blade, chop the onions coarsely.

  2. Remove and chop the celery.

  3. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.

  4. Sauté the onions for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the celery, garlic and diced turnips, and sauté just until softened and lightly golden. Set aside.

Simmer the lentils

  1. In a large soup pot, mix the rinsed lentils, bay leaf and water.

  2. Bring to a boil, cover and cook for 30 minutes, skimming the top if foam develops on the surface.

  3. Toast the whole cumin and coriander seeds in a dry skillet, stirring occasionally, until fragrant.

  4. Add to the pot together with the sautéed vegetables.

  5. Cover and simmer over low heat an additional 30 minutes to 45 minutes.

Add the spinach and finish

  1. If using fresh spinach, rinse, pat dry, trim stems and tear leaves into bit-sized pieces.

  2. Stir fresh or thawed and drained spinach into the soup, season with salt and pepper, and cook 15 minutes.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add boiling water until the desired consistency is reached.

  4. Check and adjust seasoning. Remove bay leaf.

  5. Serve with lemon quarters or sprinkle with sumac.

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. Garlic + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together664 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cumin + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Lentils + cumintop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Garlic + cumintop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Provide the bulk of the soup and thicken it as they break down during simmering.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften and brown in the oil.
Olive oil
Carries flavour from the aromatics and adds richness to the soup.
Turnips
Add a mildly sweet, earthy flavour and firm texture that holds up to cooking.
Spinach
Adds leafy texture and fresh, mineral flavour, wilting into the hot soup.
Cumin seeds
Toasting releases aromatic oils that give the soup a warm, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Toasting the cumin and coriander seeds. Dry-toasting releases volatile aromatic compounds, so the seeds must be stirred and watched until fragrant; burnt seeds turn bitter and spoil the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, olive, garlic, turnip, lentils, cumin, coriander):

  1. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  2. Oreganobetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, olive, garlic, turnip, lentils, cumin, coriander. 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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