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Breakfast Dal

A simple dal cooked with onion, butter, water, and salt, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Breakfast Dal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift, pick, and wash the Dal.

Cook

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add the washed Dal, water, and salt to the pan.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve in a vegetable dish with plain boiled rice on the side.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dal
Forms the main body of the dish, thickening as it simmers and softens.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onion for flavour.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmering the Dal gently. Keeping the heat low and stirring occasionally prevents the lentils from sticking to the base of the pan and scorching. A gentle simmer lets them soften evenly without breaking apart into a uneven texture.

“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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