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Tomato and Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of tomatoes, lentils, vegetables, and bacon simmered in stock and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 505 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato and Lentil Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak lentils for 12 hours, then drain.

  2. Slice all vegetables and cut bacon into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Melt butter in stewpan, add bacon and all vegetables except tomatoes, and cook slowly for a few minutes.

  2. Add tomatoes and lentils, cover, and steam for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Add stock or water, bouquet-garni, peppercorns, and cloves, and simmer for 3 hours or until lentils are tender.

  4. Strain soup, return to saucepan, and bring to a boil.

  5. Mix flour smoothly with a little stock or milk, then add to boiling soup.

  6. Stir and simmer for a few minutes to cook flour, then season to taste and 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. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Provide the body and bulk that thicken the soup as they break down during simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh tomato flavour that balances the sweetness of the vegetables.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the bacon and vegetables as they cook gently at the start.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied soup when cooked through.
Milk
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it smoothly with cold liquid first, then cooking it for a few minutes in the boiling soup, thickens evenly and removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lentils, ham, butter, flour, onion, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lentils, ham, butter, flour, onion, carrot. 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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