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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of lentils, vegetables, and stock, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils.

  2. Soak them for 24 hours.

  3. Drain well.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, herbs, and lentils to the pan.

  3. Cover the pan closely.

  4. Cook until the lentils are tender.

  5. Stir in the flour.

  6. Add the stock or water and milk.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

  8. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

  2. Drizzle with cream.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown lentils
Provide the main body and bulk of the soup as they soften during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and carries the flavour of the vegetables and herbs.
Flour
Stirred into the fat to thicken the soup, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the savoury flavour of the stock.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid base in which the lentils and vegetables cook and soften.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour. Flour added to hot butter must be cooked briefly and stirred well before liquid goes in, or it stays floury and lumps form, leaving the soup with a raw taste and uneven thickness.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Lentilsthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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