Skip to main content
Main

Family Soups

A hearty lentil soup with onion, celery, parsley, and spices, finished with a butter‑milk roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Family Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils thoroughly.

  2. In a saucepan, combine lentils, water, onion, celery, and parsley; bring to a boil.

  3. Skim well, add peppercorns and mace, and simmer until tender.

Strain and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve or colander into a basin.

  2. In the saucepan, melt butter, then stir in milk and flour until it boils.

  3. Pour the soup into the saucepan, heat thoroughly, and season to taste.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lentils + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Lentils
Break down when simmered and rubbed through a sieve, thickening the soup into a smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the finished soup a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, adding body to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the savoury lentil flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing cooked lentils through a sieve breaks them into a fine purée that gives the soup its smooth texture. Leaving lumps or skipping this step leaves the soup grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, onion, celery, parsley, flour, butter, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, onion, celery, parsley, flour, butter, 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

Red 5Carrot 3Green 3 See all 136 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes