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Lentil Soup

A hearty beef and lentil soup with onions, turnip, carrot, and herbs, served with croûtons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine onions, turnip, carrot, butter, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and beef.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add lentils and water, then simmer until lentils are tender.

  2. Season with salt and sugar before serving.

  3. For a puree, strain the broth, mash lentils with flour, and mix in the broth.

  4. Boil again, stirring, then strain through a sieve and skim.

  5. Serve with croûtons.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Turnip + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown in the base.
Lentils
Provide the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down while simmering.
Flour
Helps thicken the puree so it becomes smooth and body-rich.
Leg of beef
Adds savoury, browned meaty flavour to the broth.
Onions
Build sweetness and depth as they brown in the base.

The step that matters

Brown the base until it is well coloured. Browning the onions, vegetables and beef through the Maillard reaction creates deep savoury flavour. Pale, undercooked browning gives a flat-tasting broth once water is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, butter, parsley, thyme, beef, lentils):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, butter, parsley, thyme, beef, lentils. 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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