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Potage a LA Puree De Lentilles, or Lentile Soup

A lentil soup made by puréeing lentils and adding espagnole sauce, consommé, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Potage a LA Puree De Lentilles, or Lentile Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the lentils clean.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the lentils in water until tender, adding a little espagnole as you would with split‑pea soup.

  2. Once well stewed, rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the purée to the soup pot and let it boil gently for 1.5 hours.

  4. Ensure the soup is the thickness of cream; add more espagnole if too thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the bread into rounds and fry in butter until brown, then add to the soup 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lentils + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main body and earthy flavour once cooked soft and puréed.
Espagnole sauce
Adds body and depth, and helps thicken the soup to a creamy consistency.
Bread
Fried rounds add crisp browning and contrast in texture to the soft soup.
Butter
Fat that fries the bread rounds, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Rubbing the lentils through a fine sieve. Lentils must be cooked until very soft so the purée passes smoothly through the sieve. Under-cooked lentils stay grainy and give the soup an uneven, gritty texture.

Swap the lentils

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

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

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