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Stewed Lentils

A hearty stew of lentils, onions, carrots, and turnips seasoned with parsley, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Stewed Lentils

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the lentils as for soup.

  2. Put the lentils into a stewpan with the water and dripping.

  3. Cut the carrots and turnips into strips 2 inches long and ½ inch thick.

  4. Cook them separately in boiling salted water.

Stew

  1. Simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours or until soft.

  2. Cook the onions with the lentils for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on their size.

  3. Stir the parsley and seasoning into the stew.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes and add the vinegar.

Serve

  1. For serving, remove the onions and place them in the center of a dish.

  2. Pour the stew around the onion and pile the carrots and turnips on top.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Form the body of the stew as they soften and thicken the liquid.
Onions
Cook until tender and hold their shape as a whole centerpiece.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds its shape when cooked separately.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and firm texture when cooked separately.

The step that matters

Simmering the lentils until soft. Lentils need sustained simmering to break down fully; stopping early leaves them firm and the stew thin and gritty. Cooking them with the onions keeps the timing shared, so check both for tenderness before serving.

Swap the onion

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

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

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