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Lentil Soup

A simple lentil soup with carrots, turnips, onion, butter, and water, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine lentils, carrots, turnips, onion, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until vegetables and lentils are tender.

  3. Rub mixture through a sieve to create a smooth soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return soup to saucepan, add butter and seasoning, and bring to a boil.

  2. Serve with 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. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Egyptian lentils
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup once cooked and sieved.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables and lentils through a sieve breaks them into fine particles that thicken the liquid and give a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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