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Lentilles Fricassees

A lentil dish simmered with butter, onion, béchamel, cream, and egg yolk, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lentilles Fricassees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Soak the lentils in warm water for 2 hours.

  2. Combine the lentils, water, butter, and salt in a stew pan. Boil the mixture for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the lentils in a sieve.

Make the fricassée

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in the same stew pan. Sauté the chopped onion for a few minutes.

  2. Add the drained lentils, béchamel sauce, and cream to the pan. Season with pepper. Boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Stir in the egg yolk quickly.

Serve

  1. Dish up the lentils. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 and provide its body and substance.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the sauce as it is stirred in and gently heated.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and body, helping bind the lentils together.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, both for cooking the lentils and sautéing the onion.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk quickly. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat, but if the mixture is too hot or left too long it can scramble and curdle. Stirring quickly spreads the yolk evenly and keeps it smooth.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, sauce, cream, pepper, egg, parsley):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, sauce, cream, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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