Why it works: Lentils and bread work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Pur^e De Lentilles
Ingredients
Directions
Make the purée
Boil the lentils in salted water with the piece of bacon.
Once cooked, pass the lentils through a tammy.
Thin the purée with stock.
Serve
Serve with fried bread.
If too much stock is added, reduce the purée on the fire, ensuring it does not burn.
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.
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Lentils + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together77 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
- Provide the bulk and starch that thicken into a smooth, body-rich purée.
- Bacon
- Releases fat and smoky, savoury flavour into the cooking water that the lentils absorb.
- Stock
- Loosens the purée to a pourable consistency and adds savoury depth.
The step that matters
Reducing the purée on the fire. Starches and sugars in a thinned purée scorch easily on direct heat, leaving burnt flavour. Gentle heat and constant stirring evaporate the extra liquid without sticking or darkening the bottom.
“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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