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Lentil Soup, Green

A hearty soup made with green lentils, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, and bouquet garni, simmered and finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup, Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils overnight.

  2. Wash and drain the lentils, then add them to boiling water.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chopped vegetables and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Simmer for about 3½ hours, or until the lentils are soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the pot.

  4. Stir in the milk and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Boil gently for about 10 minutes, then serve with fried or toasted croutons.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Green lentils
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during long simmering.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamier texture to the sieved soup.
Onion
Builds the savoury base of flavour as it softens into the soup.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Simmer until the lentils are soft. Lentils need a long, steady simmer to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm, so the sieved soup turns out grainy and thin rather than smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, spinach, carrot, turnip, allspice, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, spinach, carrot, turnip, allspice, celery, parsley. 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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