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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with Egyptian lentils, water or stock, butter or fat, carrots, onion, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 505 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils several times until clean.

  2. Put the lentils into a pan with water or stock, dripping or butter, salt, pepper, grated carrot, and minced onion.

  3. Boil until the lentils are soft.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the fat, then stir in the flour.

  2. Add the milk to the fat and flour mixture, stirring carefully until boiling.

  3. Pour the milk mixture into the lentils and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Egyptian lentils
Form the body of the soup as they soften and break down during boiling.
Flour
Thickens the melted fat and milk into a smooth sauce that gives the soup body.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess when combined with the fat and flour mixture.
Dripping or butter
Supplies fat that carries flavour and coats the lentils and onion.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the fat and flour. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the fat before the milk is added, and the milk must be stirred carefully while heating. Otherwise lumps form and the sauce stays grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, butter, pepper, carrot, flour, milk. 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.

More lentil soup recipes

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