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Lentil Cakes

Lentil cakes are fried patties made from stewed lentils, onion, vermicelli, egg, and breadcrumbs.

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 ↓

Lentil Cakes

makes 1 or 2 cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cakes

  1. Stew the lentils with the onion in just enough water to cover them until cooked and thick.

  2. Season to taste, then add the vermicelli.

  3. Form the mixture into 1 or 2 cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the cakes in beaten egg and then in breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in vegetable butter or regular butter until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve with potatoes and green vegetables.

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. Lentils + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

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

  3. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Egyptian lentils
Cook down into a thick, soft mass that holds the cakes together.
Egg
Binds the cakes and, with breadcrumbs, forms a golden coating when fried.
Vermicelli
Adds starch that helps the mixture hold its shape when formed into cakes.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust during frying.

The step that matters

Stew the lentils until cooked and thick. Lentils must be fully softened and reduced to a thick paste, since any remaining moisture or firmness will make the cakes fall apart when formed and fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, egg. 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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