Skip to main content
Main

Brown Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, onions, carrots, celery, stock, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Brown Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lentils well.

  2. Prepare and slice the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, heat the butter or dripping and fry the vegetables until softened.

  2. Pour in the stock or water and add the lentils.

  3. Simmer until the lentils are tender, about 1.5 hours.

Finish

  1. Rinse the mixture through a sieve or colander.

  2. Bring to a boil and season with pepper and salt 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Lentils + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lentils + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together316 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 soup and thicken it as they soften and break down.
Butter or dripping
Adds richness and carries flavour from the frying vegetables into the soup.
Onion
Softens during frying and builds a sweet, savoury base for the soup.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body as it softens in the pot.
Celery
Adds aroma and savoury depth as it softens with the other vegetables.
Stock or water
Provides the liquid that cooks the lentils and vegetables into a soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the lentils are tender. Lentils need a gentle, steady simmer to soften evenly. A hard boil can break them apart and leave the texture uneven, so check tenderness before finishing.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, celery, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, celery, butter, 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes