Skip to main content
Main

Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

A lentil puree soup simmered with onions, parsley, carrots, and braised celery, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils.

  2. Place the lentils in a saucepan with the water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam that rises.

  5. Add the onions, parsley, and carrots to the pot.

  6. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt.

  7. Cover the saucepan and simmer until the lentils are tender.

Strain and finish

  1. Remove the parsley, carrots, and onions from the soup.

  2. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the strained soup to the saucepan.

  4. Add game broth to the soup to achieve the desired consistency.

  5. Heat the soup, stirring with a wooden spoon until it boils.

  6. Let the soup simmer for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

Serve

  1. Prepare the braised celery.

  2. Cut the braised celery into scallops.

  3. Add the scalloped celery to the soup before serving.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup into a smooth puree.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the stock.
Game broth
Adjusts the soup to the desired consistency and adds savory meaty flavor.
Braised celery
Adds tender texture and a savory vegetable finish to the soup.

The step that matters

Straining through a fine sieve. Lentils must be fully softened before straining, and pressing them through a fine sieve forces the pulp into a smooth puree. Skipping or rushing this step leaves grainy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, clove, parsley, celery, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, clove, parsley, celery, carrot. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes