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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, meat bones, carrots, turnips, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lentils 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

Make the stock

  1. Simmer meat bones, carrot, turnip, onion, and enough water to cover for 3 to 4 hours to make stock.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste, then strain the stock.

  3. When cold, remove all fat from the stock.

Finish the soup

  1. Combine the stock with lentils in a saucepan and boil until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve, warm it again, and add butter.

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. Turnip + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + lentilstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 when rubbed through a sieve they thicken the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Meat bones
Give the stock its savory depth and body during the long simmer.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the cold stock. Fat solidifies on top of cold stock, so it lifts off cleanly. If it stays in, the finished soup becomes greasy and the fat separates into visible slicks.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Lentilsthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, butter. 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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