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Black Lentils with Swiss Chard Recipe

This recipe was a dinner party experiment that went very, very right. I used chard from the local farm we joined and black lentils I had in the pantry. Chard...

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Why it works: Chard and lentils share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 18 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

8 servings

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By chow. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chard + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Chard + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Garlic + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,839 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chard, onion, carrot, olive, garlic, white wine, chicken):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Grapeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against chard, onion, carrot, olive, garlic, white wine, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).