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Fricassee of Lentils

A creamy lentil stew made with butter, onion, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fricassee of Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cook the lentils until tender, then drain them.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour and cook slowly until nicely browned.

  2. Add some of the lentil broth to create a light sauce and bring to a boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lentils, season with salt and pepper, and let simmer for another 15 minutes 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. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the main body of the dish and provide the substance that the sauce coats.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, when browned, adds a nutty, toasted flavour.
Onion
Softens into the butter and adds sweetness and aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in butter until nicely browned develops toasty flavour and colour. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while cooking too fast can scorch it before the sauce is built.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, butter, flour, 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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