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Stewed Lentils

A lentil stew simmered with onions, dripping, and stock, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Stewed Lentils

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Soak the lentils in cold water overnight.

  2. In a stewpan, add the lentils and dripping, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the hot water or stock and onions, and cook gently until soft, about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Dish up the lentils, place the onions in the center, and sprinkle with parsley.

  2. Add salt and pepper just 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 + peppertop 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, as they cook, soften into a thick, spoonable texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften into the stewing liquid.
Dripping
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the lentils as they simmer.
Hot water or stock
Provides the cooking liquid that hydrates and softens the lentils.

The step that matters

Cook gently until soft. Gentle simmering lets lentil skins soften and starch release slowly, giving a creamy result. A hard boil can break the lentils apart and leave them unevenly cooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, parsley, pepper. 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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