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Lentilles Sautees Au Beurre

Sautéed lentils cooked in butter with parsley, chives, 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 chive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentilles Sautees Au Beurre

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils overnight in warm water.

  2. Drain the lentils and place them in a saucepan with enough lukewarm water to cover.

Cook

  1. Simmer the lentils for 2 hours until tender.

  2. Drain the lentils and return them to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter, chopped parsley, chives, salt, and pepper to taste, then stir well 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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried lentils
Provide the main body and bulk of the dish as they soften during simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked lentils.

The step that matters

Simmering until tender. Dried lentils must simmer long enough for their starch to fully soften; stopping early leaves them firm and chalky. Soaking first shortens cooking and helps them cook evenly.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, chive, 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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