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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, stock, vegetables, and a roux of dripping, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Soak lentils overnight.

  2. Combine soaked lentils and stock in a saucepan.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

Cook the soup

  1. Add sliced vegetables and boil for one hour.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to strain.

Finish the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a separate saucepan, then stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the strained stock, seasoning with salt and pepper, and stir in the milk.

  3. Boil for two minutes 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. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Dripping
Provides fat that carries flavour and forms the base for the roux.
Flour
Combined with the fat to form a roux that thickens the stock.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Carrot, onion and turnip
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour to the stock as they simmer.

The step that matters

Stirring in the strained stock. Adding liquid to a fat and flour roux gradually while stirring keeps it smooth; adding it all at once can leave lumps of flour that do not dissolve.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, carrot, turnip, flour, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, turnip, flour, milk, pepper. 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 lentil soup recipes

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