Name: Lentil Soup Without Stock
Ingredients: 2 pints yellow lentils; ½ small carrot, diced; 1 small onion, chopped; ¼ ounce celery, chopped; ¼ ounce coarse sea salt; 2 quarts water; ½ ounce sliced bread; ½ ounce fresh butter

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lentil Soup Without Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

Wash lentils in lukewarm water and remove any bad ones.
Combine lentils, water, onion, celery, carrot, and salt in a stewpan.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Skim off foam.
Simmer until lentils are soft.
Every half hour, add ½ cup of cold water to accelerate cooking.
Drain the cooked lentils.
Reserve the cooking liquid.

Make the puree

Pass the lentils through a wire sieve into a dish to create a puree.
Moisten the puree with some reserved liquid as needed.
Return the puree to the stewpan.

Finish and serve

Add the reserved liquid for the soup.
Boil the soup.
Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
Place sliced bread in a soup tureen.
Add butter to the bread.
Pour the soup over the bread.
Stir to melt the butter.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together505 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lentils + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together316 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow lentils: Break down into a smooth puree that gives the soup its body.
Sliced bread: Soaks up the soup and gives the dish a soft, substantial texture.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts into the soup.
Onion: Builds savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the broth.
Carrot: Adds gentle sweetness and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Passing the lentils through a sieve. Lentils must be fully soft before sieving, or the puree will be grainy and thick. Adding cold water during cooking slows the boil so the lentils soften evenly without breaking apart early.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, celery, bread, butter):

Beansfits better
Lentilsthe original
Chestnutfits about as well
Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, celery, bread, butter. 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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Lentil Soup Without Stock