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Lentil Paste

A thick paste made from cooked lentils, bread crumbs, cheese, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Thoroughly wash the lentils and place them in a pot with just enough water to cover.

  2. Boil gently, ensuring they do not burn, until thoroughly cooked.

Make the paste

  1. Add the bread crumbs, grated cheese, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir the mixture well and bring it gently to a boil.

  3. Cook for ten minutes, then transfer to jars.

Finish

  1. When cool, melt some butter and pour it 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. Lentils + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Red lentils
Provide the main body of the paste as they soften and break down when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help thicken the paste as it cooks.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and savoury flavour, and helps bind the paste as it melts.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Boil gently without burning. Lentils can scorch on the bottom of the pot if the heat is too high or they are left unattended. Gentle heat with enough water lets them cook evenly and soften fully, which gives a smooth paste.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, bread, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, bread, nutmeg, 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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