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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, vegetables, stock, and a roux of dripping and flour, finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Soak the lentils overnight.

  2. Combine the lentils and stock in a saucepan.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sliced vegetables and boil for one hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a smooth soup.

Make the thickened base and serve

  1. Melt the dripping in a separate saucepan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted dripping.

  3. Gradually stir in the strained stock, season with salt and pepper, and add the milk.

  4. Boil for two minutes, then serve.

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. Lentils + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils
Provide the main body and earthy flavour, and thicken the soup when puréed through a sieve.
Dripping
Carries flavour and adds richness, and forms the roux base with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the melted fat, giving body to the liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a softer, rounder flavour to the finished soup.
Carrot, onion and turnip
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften and break down into the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the stock into the roux. Adding liquid too quickly or without stirring can leave lumps of flour. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, carrot, turnip, flour, milk, 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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