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Lentils Boiled Plain

Plain boiled lentils seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lentils Boiled Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils well in cold water.

  2. Put the lentils in a pot with 3 quarts of cold water.

  3. Add the drippings, salt, and pepper.

  4. Boil slowly until tender, about 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain off any remaining water.

  2. Stir in the butter, chopped parsley, sugar, and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Lentils
Form the dish's main body, softening into a tender, thick texture as they cook.
Drippings
Add fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until tender. A gentle simmer cooks lentils evenly and keeps their skins from splitting, while a hard rolling boil can break them apart and turn them mushy.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley, sugar. 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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