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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with carrots, onions, lettuce, lentils, butter, stock, and crumbled rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and lentils share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 51 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine carrots, onions, lettuce, and butter in a stew pan.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Add soaked lentils and 1 pint of stock.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Pour in remaining stock and bring to a boil.

  6. Cook for another hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in crumbled rolls and let them soak until soft.

  2. Rub mixture through a wire sieve or tammy cloth.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Boil once more and serve.

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. Lettuce + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + lentilstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
French rolls
Soak up liquid and help thicken the soup once softened and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the vegetables as they begin to cook.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the soup base.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they soften in the pan.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Cooked lentils and vegetables must be pushed fully through the sieve to give a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves grainy, fibrous pieces in the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, lettuce, butter, lentils, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, lettuce, butter, lentils, milk. 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.

More lentil soup recipes

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