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Lentil Soup

A soup made with red lentils, onion, celery, carrot, turnip, butter, stock or water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 peel the lentils, onion, celery, carrot, and turnip.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

Make the soup

  1. Add the vegetables and cook for 5 minutes without browning.

  2. Pour in the stock or water and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and simmer until the lentils are tender.

  4. Blend the soup until smooth, then return it to the saucepan.

  5. 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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 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

Red lentils
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter or dripping
Carries flavor and fat, helping the vegetables soften gently in the pan.
Onion
Builds the savory aromatic base of the soup as it softens.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the blended soup.
Turnip
Adds mild, slightly peppery flavor and body to the blended soup.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables without browning. Gentle cooking softens the vegetables and draws out their sweetness. Browning adds bitter, toasted notes that change the soup's clean, mild flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

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