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Baked Lentils

A baked lentil dish cooked with salt pork, onion, and seasoned water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Lentils

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the lentils, then soak them in water overnight.

  2. Drain the lentils and place them in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water; heat slowly.

  3. As the water boils, the lentils will rise to the top; remove them with a skimmer and place in a deep baking dish with the pork and onion in the center.

Bake

  1. Mix the salt and pepper with 1 quart of boiling water and pour it over the lentils.

  2. Cook slowly in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 4 to 5 hours, adding a little water as needed.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the bulk of the dish and set into a tender, spoonable texture during long baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that seeps into the lentils as they bake.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it cooks slowly with the lentils.

The step that matters

Adding the lentils to the boiling water stage. Lentils must be skimmed off as they rise, so they are not overcooked before baking; the slow, long bake then softens them evenly without breaking them down.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, 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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