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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of lentils simmered with stock, onions, herbs, and butter, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils.

  2. Soak them overnight.

  3. Drain the water in the morning.

  4. Put the lentils in a soup kettle.

  5. Add the stock.

  6. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Make the aromatic base

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the sliced onion, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  3. Fry until light brown.

  4. Add the fried mixture to the lentils.

  5. Simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Press the soup through a fine sieve.

  2. Return it to the kettle.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Serve with squares of toasted bread.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lentils + thymetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 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

Lentils
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Butter
Carries the frying of the aromatics, adding richness and helping the onion brown.
Onion
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth in the base.
Stock
Supplies the cooking liquid and the main savory flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until light brown. Browning the onion in butter develops sweet, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale or burnt onion will taste flat or bitter in the finished soup.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, thyme, butter, pepper, meat, bread):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, thyme, butter, pepper, meat, bread. 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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