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Lentil Roast

A baked lentil and bread crumb mixture with butter, served sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lentil Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cook lentils in water until tender, then drain and rub through a sieve.

  2. Prepare brown bread crumbs by crisping slices in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about an hour, then crumble them.

  3. Mix the lentils with the bread crumbs and rub in the butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a pie dish, add the mixture, and bake at 350°F (175°C) until nicely browned on top.

  2. Let cool, then turn out and slice.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lentils + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Cooked and sieved, they form the soft, bindable body of the roast.
Brown bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add structure so the mixture holds its shape when sliced.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter):

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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