Skip to main content
Main

Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

A lentil puree soup made with lentils, water, onions, parsley, celery, carrots, salt, game broth, and braised celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup, Puree of Lentils, Conte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils and place them in a saucepan with water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the onions, parsley, carrots, and salt. Cover and simmer until tender.

  4. Remove the parsley, carrots, and onions. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan and add game broth to reach the desired consistency.

  2. Heat the soup, stirring with a wooden spoon until it boils, then simmer for 30 minutes, skimming as needed.

  3. Prepare the braised celery separately, cut into scallops, and add to the soup just 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Break down into a thick puree that gives the soup its body.
Game broth
Adds liquid and savory depth to adjust the soup to the desired consistency.
Braised celery
Adds tender texture and a mellow, cooked celery flavor.

The step that matters

Simmering until tender before straining. Lentils must be fully softened before straining; undercooked lentils will not break down into a smooth puree and will leave a gritty texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, clove, parsley, celery, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes