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Lentil Soup

A hearty lentil soup with ham, partridge, and root vegetables, finished with a puréed lentil base and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Pick and wash the lentils.

  2. In a soup pot, combine lentils, ham, partridge, carrot, turnip, onion, leeks, and celery tied together.

  3. Add enough broth to cover and boil slowly for 3 hours.

  4. Remove the roots, partridge, and ham.

Make the puree

  1. Rub the lentils through a sieve.

  2. Add some broth to the puree.

  3. Boil the puree.

  4. Clarify the puree by skimming off scum and grease.

Serve

  1. Fry diced bread in butter.

  2. Serve in a tureen with the 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lentils + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down into a thick puree that gives the soup its body.
Ham
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Partridge
Adds rich, gamey flavor to the broth while it simmers.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Clarify the puree by skimming off scum and grease. Fat and scum rise to the surface as the soup boils. Skimming them off keeps the puree clean-tasting and smooth rather than greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, ham, carrot, turnip, leek, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, ham, carrot, turnip, leek, celery. 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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