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Lentil Potagb

A hearty lentil soup with onion, garlic, shallot, parsley, bay leaf, cloves, oil or butter, rice, and spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Potagb

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Add ½ pint of lentils, 1 onion, 1 head of garlic, 1 shallot, 1 sprig of parsley, 1 bay leaf, 3 cloves, and 1 teacup of salad oil (or 3 ounces of butter).

  3. Season with pepper and boil for 2 hours. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

  4. After 2 hours, add 3 ounces of rice and 1 pound of chopped spinach.

  5. Continue to boil for another 2 hours or until everything is thoroughly cooked.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lentils + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together633 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 as they soften and thicken the broth.
Rice
Adds body and thickens the soup as its starch releases during simmering.
Spinach
Adds leafy texture and color; it is added late so it does not overcook.
Salad oil or butter
Carries flavor and adds richness and mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Stir frequently during the long boil. Lentils and aromatics settle and stick to the bottom of the pot over two hours of simmering, and scorching gives a burnt taste that spreads through the whole soup. Frequent stirring keeps heat even and prevents this.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, onion, garlic, shallot, parsley, butter, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, onion, garlic, shallot, parsley, butter, 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.

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