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Swiss Lentil Soup

A lentil soup made with brown lentils, onion, water, salt, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swiss Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Cook the lentils in a small quantity of boiling water.

  2. When the lentils are half done, add the onion cut in halves or quarters.

  3. Once the lentils are tender, remove the onion with a fork.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the lentils through a colander and add enough boiling water to make three pints in total.

  2. Season with salt.

  3. Reheat to boiling.

  4. Thicken with the browned flour mixed with cold water.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Brown lentils
Break down when rubbed through a colander, giving the soup its body and thickness.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, and its toasted flavour adds depth.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the cooking water and is removed before the soup is finished.

The step that matters

Thicken with the browned flour mixed with cold water. Flour mixed with cold water first disperses evenly, so it does not form lumps when added to hot soup. Stir it in while the soup is at a boil so the starch can swell and thicken it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, flour. 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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