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Lentil Gravy

A thickened lentil sauce made with peanut butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lentil Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. In a pot, combine lentils, water, and onion slices.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the onion slices.

  5. Stir in peanut butter and salt to taste.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix white flour with cold water until smooth.

  2. Add the mixture to the pot to thicken.

  3. If the gravy is too thick, add more water to reach desired consistency.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + peanuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + peanuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down during cooking to give the gravy body and a thick, earthy texture.
Peanut butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the gravy a creamy texture and nutty flavor.
White flour
Starch that swells when heated with liquid, thickening the gravy.

The step that matters

Make the flour slurry smooth before adding it. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules hydrate unevenly. Mixing it first with cold water separates the granules so they thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, peanut, butter, flour. 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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