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Soup, Puree of Lentils

A thick lentil puree soup made with broth, water, butter, and optional ham or salt pork, served with fried bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Soup, Puree of Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Cook the lentils in 1 quart of broth and 1 quart of water until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the carrots, onions, and celery, then pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add more broth as needed.

Simmer and serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan and stir until it boils.

  2. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for 25 minutes.

  3. Before serving, skim the soup well, add a piece of butter, and serve with small fried bread crumbs.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Lentils + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Lentils + hamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down when cooked and sieved to give the soup its body and purée texture.
Broth
Adds savoury flavour and liquid that is cooked into the lentils.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, ham. 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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