Skip to main content
Main

Potage K R Italienne, K LA Pur^e De Lentilles

A vegetable and lentil soup with a lentil purée topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Potage K R Italienne, K LA Pur^e De Lentilles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine onions, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, turnips, celery, leeks, parsley roots, and peas in a stewpot; cover with water and boil slowly.

Make the lentil purée

  1. Boil lentils in another pot with water.

  2. Add 1/3 cup fine oil and a little coarse sea salt to the lentils.

  3. Once lentils are cooked, strain them and dilute with vegetable broth.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the strained lentils with the vegetable mixture, adding more oil and salt as needed.

  2. Serve the soup thick, pouring the lentil purée on top.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down when cooked and strained to thicken the soup into a purée.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory base as they soften during slow boiling.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetable base.
Fine oil
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsnip, cabbage, turnip, celery, leek, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsnip, cabbage, turnip, celery, leek, parsley. 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

Red 5Carrot 3Green 3 See all 136 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes