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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup of red lentils, onions, carrot, turnip, and butter, simmered for hours and served hot.

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 ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash lentils in several waters until clean, then soak them in cold water overnight.

  2. Combine lentils, water, and salt in a large saucepan.

Cook the soup

  1. Bring to a boil without a lid, skimming thoroughly.

  2. Cut onions, carrot, and turnip into small pieces and add them to the lentils.

  3. Boil for three hours, skimming frequently.

  4. Press the mixture through a colander.

  5. Season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with toasted bread cut into dice.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red lentils
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften into the broth.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body when cooked and pressed through a colander.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and body as it softens and is pressed into the soup.
Butter or dripping
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Skimming during the boil. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the soup heats and boils. Skimming them off keeps the broth clean-tasting and clear, so the long simmer produces a smooth, pleasant soup.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, turnip, 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.

More lentil soup recipes

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