Skip to main content
Main

Lentils, Dahl

A lentil curry made with onion, butter, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lentils and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,221 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentils, Dahl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils well and soak them overnight.

  2. Strain the lentils.

Cook

  1. Heat the dripping in a pan and fry the sliced onion until golden brown.

  2. Add the lentils to the pan with enough water to cover them.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. When the lentils are soft and smooth, let the water dry off.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the curry powder, sugar, and butter, and serve hot.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lentils + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lentils + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egyptian lentils
Form the bulk of the dish and break down into a soft, smooth texture as they cook.
Onion
Fried until golden brown, it adds savoury sweetness and deep flavour to the base.
Butter
Stirred in at the end, it adds richness and a rounded, silky mouthfeel.
Dripping
Fat used to fry the onion, carrying flavour and helping it brown.
Curry powder
Stirred in at the end, it supplies the main spiced aroma of the dish.

The step that matters

Let the water dry off after the lentils soften. Simmering until the lentils are soft and smooth, then evaporating the excess water, sets the texture. Too much liquid left behind makes the dal watery and loose.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, sugar):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar. 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 dal recipes

Breakfast 6Makhani 3 See all 2 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes