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Lentil Puree Soup Au Maigre

A simple lentil puree soup made with lentils, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Puree Soup Au Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils overnight.

  2. In a saucepan, combine lentils, chopped young carrots, turnips, onions, and celery.

Cook and strain

  1. Pour in 4 quarts of cold water and boil gently until the lentils are soft.

  2. Pass the soup through a fine sieve, rubbing the vegetables and lentils through with a wooden spoon.

  3. Return the soup to the saucepan, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a soup-tureen with slices of toast or 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. 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. Turnip + celerytop 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 when simmered and sieved to thicken the soup into a smooth body.
Young carrots
Add sweetness and body to the puree as they soften during simmering.
Turnips
Contribute mild earthy flavour and body to the puree as they soften.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the base.

The step that matters

Passing the soup through a fine sieve. Lentils and vegetables must be cooked fully soft before sieving, or the puree will be grainy and rough. Rubbing them through breaks down the remaining solids for a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

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