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Curried Lentils

A lentil dish cooked with curry powder, onions, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,221 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Curried Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and steep the lentils overnight in cold water.

Cook

  1. Slice the onions thinly and fry them with the curry powder in butter until nicely browned.

  2. Add the lentils, cover closely, and cook gently until the lentils are soft but not mashed.

  3. If the lentils are very dry, add a little stock or water.

Serve

  1. Serve in a pile on a hot dish.

  2. Serve with boiled rice.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Split lentils
Form the main bulk of the dish and thicken as they soften and break down.
Onions
Brown in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth.
Curry powder
Adds the warm, aromatic spice flavour, bloomed in the hot fat.
Butter or dripping
Carries the spices and helps the onions brown, adding richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the lentils gently, covered, until soft but not mashed. Split lentils break down quickly under strong heat or stirring. Gentle, covered cooking with enough moisture softens them evenly while keeping their shape, and the cook must check them so they do not turn to mush.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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