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Lentil Puree

A smooth lentil purée flavored with parsley, onion, celery, Marmite, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery 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 ↓

Lentil Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Pick over and wash the lentils, then soak them in lukewarm water with baking soda for several hours.

  2. Boil the lentils in slightly salted water with parsley, onion, and celery until tender.

  3. Drain the lentils and remove the parsley.

Make the purée

  1. Pass the lentils, onion, and celery through a fine sieve.

  2. Reheat the purée and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix in the Marmite; if too thick, add a little milk.

  4. Dish up and 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 purée as they soften and break down into a thick, smooth texture.
Baking soda
Raises the soaking water's alkalinity, helping lentils soften more evenly during soaking.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavour that is carried into the purée when passed through the sieve.
Marmite
Adds deep savory, umami flavour to the purée.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to loosen the purée if it becomes too thick.

The step that matters

Pass the lentils through a fine sieve. Lentils must be fully tender before sieving, since undercooked pieces stay gritty and give the purée a coarse texture. Pressing them through a fine sieve removes the skins and fibres that would otherwise remain.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, parsley, celery, pepper, nutmeg, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, parsley, celery, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

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