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Lentil Soup

A soup made with red lentils, turnips, carrots, onion, celery, parsley, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 and pick the lentils.

  2. Set them on the fire in 4 quarts of spring water.

  3. Add the vegetables and some salt.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil until quite soft.

  2. Rub through a coarse sieve or colander, adding boiling water as needed.

Finish

  1. Return to the pan, season with pepper and salt.

  2. Stir in the butter and boil for a few minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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

Red lentils
Break down when boiled to thicken the soup into a smooth purée.
Turnips
Add body and sweetness as they soften during the long boil.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body, thickening the soup as they cook down.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and flavor base as it softens in the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred into the finished soup.

The step that matters

Rub through a coarse sieve or colander. Pressing the cooked soup through a sieve breaks down the soft lentils and vegetables into a smooth texture. Adding boiling water as needed keeps the purée loose and hot, so it does not stiffen before serving.

Swap the onion

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

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

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