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Lentil Pie

A baked pie of cooked lentils, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, herbs, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with a short crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lentil Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet and fry the diced potatoes and onion until nearly soft.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes, cooked lentils, herbs, and seasoning to the skillet and mix well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pie dish and add enough water or vegetable stock to create gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the quartered hard-boiled eggs on top.

  2. Cover with a short crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Lentils + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the bulk of the filling and give it a hearty, substantial texture.
Potatoes
Soften during frying and add starch that thickens the filling and gives body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a mild acidity that brightens the savoury filling.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the vegetables and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add richness and set into firm pieces through the baked filling.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, tomato, onion, egg, butter, 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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