Skip to main content
Main

Moong Dal

A lentil dish made with roasted moong dal, ghee, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Moong Dal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dal

  1. Clean, pick, and roast the moong dal.

  2. Mix the dal with ground condiments and salt.

  3. Place the dal in a pot.

  4. Add water until it is 2 inches above the dal.

  5. Boil until the dal dissolves, avoiding disturbance.

  6. Churn the dal using a wooden instrument called a ghootnee.

Fry the onions

  1. Warm the ghee in a separate pot.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in the warmed ghee.

  3. Chop the fried onions.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the chopped onions to the churned dal.

  2. Pour the churned dal into the pot with melted ghee.

  3. Stir until well mixed.

  4. Cover the pot.

  5. Simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Turmeric + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Moong dal
Breaks down during boiling to form the thick, creamy body of the dish.
Ghee
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Onions
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the dal.
Ground chilies
Provide heat and pungency that spreads through the dal during simmering.
Ground turmeric
Adds earthy aroma and a yellow colour to the dal.

The step that matters

Boil until the dal dissolves, avoiding disturbance. Lentils break down fully only with steady boiling; stirring or moving the pot too early can leave them unevenly cooked and the texture grainy rather than smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, turmeric, ginger, garlic):

  1. Broccolifits about as well
  2. Welsh onionfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, turmeric, ginger, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes