Skip to main content
Main

Plain Mussoor-ka-dal

Plain Masoor Ka Dal is a simple red lentil dish seasoned with turmeric, garlic, and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turmeric and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,876 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Plain Mussoor-ka-dal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dal

  1. Pick out any gravel from the dal and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Mix the turmeric and salt with the dal.

Cook the dal

  1. Place the dal in a pot with enough water and boil until soft.

  2. Remove from heat and mash the dal smoothly with the back of a spoon.

  3. Return the mashed dal to the pot, add more water, and boil to your desired consistency.

Temper and serve

  1. Remove from heat and temper with garlic fried in ghee.

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. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Turmeric + gheetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together730 recipes
  5. Garlic + gheetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together667 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Masoor dal
Breaks down into a soft, creamy body when boiled and mashed.
Ghee
Carries the flavour of the garlic and adds richness to the finished dal.
Garlic
Frying in ghee releases aroma that gives the tempering its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the dal until soft. Lentils need enough water and sustained heat to fully soften; undercooked dal stays grainy and firm, so the mashed texture will be uneven.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turmeric, garlic, ghee):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turmeric, garlic, ghee. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes