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Stewed Lentils

A simple lentil dish simmered with onion, butter, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,221 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils in cold water.

  2. Soak the lentils for 4 hours or overnight.

  3. Drain the lentils.

  4. Place the lentils in a saucepan.

  5. Cover the lentils with cold water.

  6. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to the saucepan.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  8. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour.

Cook the onion

  1. Peel the onion and slice it.

  2. Melt the butter in another saucepan.

  3. Add the sliced onion to the melted butter.

  4. Fry the onion until golden, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the cooked lentils with the onion.

  2. Add ½ cup of stock to the lentils and onion.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Stir the mixture over heat for 10 minutes.

  5. Serve the lentils in a hot vegetable dish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown lentils
Form the bulk of the dish and hold their shape while simmering to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion, helping it fry to golden colour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in butter.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, so the lentils and onion blend into a cohesive dish.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until golden, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.. Onion sugars brown quickly in butter; if they darken too far they turn bitter, so gentle stirring keeps the colour even and the flavour sweet.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, 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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