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Lentil, Pea, or Haricot Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, peas, or haricots, carrots, onions, celery, turnip, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil, Pea, or Haricot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils.

  2. Soak the lentils in the stock for 12 hours.

  3. Place the lentils in a pan.

Simmer and strain

  1. Skim the mixture when boiling.

  2. Add sliced carrot, onion, celery, and turnip.

  3. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. Stir in ½ pint of milk 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. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Bone stock or water
Acts as the cooking liquid that softens the lentils and vegetables into soup.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color to the soup base.
Onion
Builds savory aroma and depth as it softens in the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a mellow, creamy finish to the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked lentils and vegetables through a sieve breaks them into fine particles that thicken the soup smoothly. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy, thin texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper, milk, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper, milk, 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.

More lentil soup recipes

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