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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with red lentils, ham bone, potatoes, turnip, carrot, onion, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Wash and drain the lentils.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, melt the dripping and add the diced vegetables.

  2. Cook gently with the lid on for 20 minutes.

  3. Add water and the ham bone, then bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer gently, stirring frequently, until the lentils are tender.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and continue cooking for a total of 2 to 3 hours 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Red lentils
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Ham bone
Releases savory flavor and richness into the water as it simmers.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook, adding starch that helps thicken the soup.
Onion
Builds a sweet, aromatic base when cooked gently in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, stirring frequently, until the lentils are tender. Lentils can stick and scorch on the bottom of the pan at a hard boil. Gentle simmering with regular stirring cooks them evenly and lets them break down smoothly into the soup.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, turnip, pepper, carrot, ham, onion. 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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