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Lentilles Sautees Au Beurre

Sautéed lentils cooked in butter with parsley and chives, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and chive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentilles Sautees Au Beurre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Soak the lentils overnight in warm water.

  2. Drain the lentils and place them in a saucepan with lukewarm water.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours and 30 minutes until tender, then drain.

Sauté and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the lentils, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and chives, 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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried lentils
Provide the main bulk and body of the dish once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the lentils a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Simmering the lentils until tender. Dried lentils need a long, gentle simmer to soften fully. Stopping early leaves them firm, while a hard boil can break them apart and make them mushy.

Swap the lentils

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, chive, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, chive, 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.

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