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Lentil Soup with Milk

A lentil soup thickened with flour and butter, flavored with onions, carrot, celery, garlic, salt, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lentil Soup with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils, celery, and carrot.

  2. Peel the onions.

Make the soup

  1. Put the lentils, vegetables, seasoning, and water into a saucepan and boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. Strain the soup through a colander or sieve.

Finish with milk and serve

  1. Blend the flour and dripping (or butter) in the saucepan.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. Pour in the strained soup.

  5. Bring to a boil again.

  6. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down during boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Flour
Blended with fat and milk to form a thickening base that gives the soup a smoother body.
Dripping or butter
Fat that blends with the flour and carries flavour through the soup.
Skim milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.
Onions
Release sugars and aroma during long simmering, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the milk. Adding milk to a hot roux-style flour and fat mix slowly, while stirring, keeps the flour dispersed. Adding it all at once can create lumps that do not smooth out easily.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, celery, clove, flour, 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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