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Lentils, Fried

A dish of lentils cooked, then fried with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentils, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash lentils.

  2. Soak lentils overnight.

  3. Drain lentils.

  4. Cover lentils with warm water mixed with baking soda.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  7. Drain lentils.

  8. Cover with fresh boiling water.

  9. Boil gently until tender, about 1.5 hours. Test by mashing a lentil; if it crushes easily, they are done.

  10. Drain lentils in a colander.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add lentils to pan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir over heat for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lentils + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, becoming soft and tender when simmered and then fried.
Baking soda
Raises the alkalinity of the soaking water, helping lentils soften and break down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the lentils brown and develop flavour in the pan.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, then test by mashing. Lentils that are undercooked stay firm and grainy, while overcooking turns them mushy. Mashing a lentil shows whether the starch has fully softened before draining and frying.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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