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Lentils a LA Creme

A lentil dish simmered with thick cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentils a LA Creme

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils in cold water overnight.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the lentils in salted water for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the lentils and add the thick cream, pepper, and salt if needed.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 minutes and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lentils + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 set the soft, mashable body once cooked.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture that coats the lentils.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 minutes after adding the cream. Once the cream is in, vigorous boiling can cause it to separate or turn grainy. A gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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