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Lentil Paste

A thick paste made from cooked red lentils, butter, lemon juice, nutmeg, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lentil Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

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

  2. Simmer gently until the lentils are quite soft.

Make the paste

  1. Add the butter, lemon juice, nutmeg, and bread crumbs.

  2. Stir well, heat to boiling point, and cook for 10 minutes.

Jar and finish

  1. Transfer to jars, and when cold, pour melted butter or nutter 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lentils + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Lentils + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red lentils
Cook down to a soft base that forms the bulk of the paste.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture as it cooks.
Butter or nutter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the paste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Simmer the lentils gently until quite soft. Lentils must break down fully before the other ingredients are added, or the paste will be grainy and uneven. Gentle heat softens them evenly without scorching the bottom of the pot or boiling the water away too fast.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lemon, nutmeg. 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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