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Puree of Lentils

A thick lentil puree served hot with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Pick and wash the lentils well.

  2. Pour cold water over the lentils in a saucepan.

  3. Boil for four hours, adding hot water as needed to keep the saucepan full.

  4. Add salt when the lentils are half-boiled.

  5. When done, let the saucepan stand for a minute, then drain off the water.

  6. Rub the lentils through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a stewpan.

  2. Add pepper and salt, then stir in the lentils.

  3. Serve very hot with sippets of fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the main body of the puree, becoming soft and smooth when boiled and sieved.
Butter or beet dripping
Adds fat and richness, giving the puree a silky mouthfeel and flavour.
Salt
Seasons the lentils and enhances their flavour when added during boiling.

The step that matters

Add salt when the lentils are half-boiled. Salt added at this point seasons the lentils as they soften. Adding it too early or too late can leave the flavour uneven, so timing matters for an even seasoning throughout the puree.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, bread. 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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