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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of diced beef, lentils, onions, turnip, carrot, butter, herbs, and water, seasoned with salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. In a stewpan, combine the onions, turnip, carrot, butter, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and beef.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until browned.

Simmer and season

  1. Add the lentils and water, then simmer until the lentils are very tender.

  2. Season with salt and sugar 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Turnip + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building a flavorful base for the soup.
Beef
Browns in the pan to add savory, meaty depth to the soup.
Lentils
Break down as they simmer, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Butter
Carries heat in the pan and adds richness to the browned vegetables.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and body as it softens in the base.
Turnip
Softens during cooking and adds a mild, earthy sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the base. Cooking the onions, vegetables and beef until browned develops deep savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables leave the finished soup tasting flat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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