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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of carrots, onions, lettuce, lentils, butter, stock, and French roll crumbs, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and lentils share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 51 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine carrots, onions, lettuce, and butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Add soaked lentils and 1 pint of stock.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Pour in the remaining stock and bring to a boil.

  2. Cook for another hour.

  3. Stir in the crumbs of the French rolls and let them soak.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve or tammy cloth.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  6. Boil once more before serving.

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. Lettuce + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 thickening that give the soup its substance.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour to the vegetables.
French rolls
Their crumbs soak up liquid and thicken the soup as it is rubbed through.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften during the initial simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the finished purée.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Lentils and soaked crumbs must be soft and fully cooked before straining, or the purée will stay grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, lettuce, butter, lentils, 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.

More lentil soup recipes

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