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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, carrots, turnip, celery, onion, dripping, water, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils and soak them overnight in 1 quart of water.

  2. Prepare the other vegetables and cut them into slices.

  3. Strain the water from the lentils, reserving it.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan, add the lentils and other vegetables, and sweat them.

  2. Pour in the reserved soaking water, add salt and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer the soup until the vegetables are cooked, stirring frequently for 3 to 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass the soup through a colander and mash with a fork.

  2. Add the milk and reheat, then serve with fried or toasted 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
Provide the main body and thickening of the soup as they break down during long simmering.
Dripping
Adds fat for sweating the vegetables, carrying flavour and giving a richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup when stirred in at the end.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns while sweating in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer the soup until the vegetables are cooked, stirring frequently. Lentils and vegetables need long, gentle simmering to soften fully. Frequent stirring prevents the starch-rich lentils from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan, which would taste burnt.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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