Skip to main content
Main

Lentil Potage

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Potage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

  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.

  4. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

  5. Add 3 ounces of rice and 1 pound of chopped, par-boiled spinach.

  6. Continue boiling for another 2 hours or until everything is thoroughly cooked.

  7. Add salt just 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 + 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
Provide the main body and thickening of the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Rice
Adds starch that thickens the soup and gives it a fuller, heartier body.
Spinach
Adds leafy texture and color; it is added late so it stays tender rather than overcooked.
Salad oil or butter
Adds fat for richness and mouthfeel, carrying flavor through the soup.

The step that matters

Stir frequently during the long boil. Lentils and starch settle and stick to the bottom of the pot over two hours of simmering, which can scorch the soup and give it a burnt taste. Regular stirring keeps solids suspended and heat even.

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.

More lentil soup recipes

Red 5Carrot 3Green 3 See all 136 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipes