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Lentil Soup

A simple soup of lentils, carrots, turnips, onion, and water, finished with butter and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine lentils, carrots, turnips, onion, and water.

  2. Cook until the vegetables and lentils are tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan, add butter and seasoning, and bring to a boil.

  2. Serve hot with toasted bread slices.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egyptian lentils
Form the main body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften and purée.
Turnips
Contribute mild earthy flavour and body once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. The vegetables and lentils must be fully tender first, otherwise the purée stays grainy and the soup will not become smooth when pressed through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, turnip, 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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