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Lentils, Savoury

A lentil dish cooked with butter, onion, parsley, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lentils, Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils in tepid water for about 3 hours, changing the water as it cools.

  2. Melt half the butter in a stewpan and lightly fry the onion.

  3. Add the drained lentils and cover with warm water.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. Cook gently for about 2 hours until the lentils are tender.

  2. Remove the lid.

  3. Allow the water to evaporate until the lentils are dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining butter, white sauce, and parsley.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Toss over the fire until thoroughly hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lentils + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,221 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Lentils
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long soaking and gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the frying and finishing stages.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy binding that coats the cooked lentils.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour when lightly fried in butter at the start.

The step that matters

Allow the water to evaporate until the lentils are dry. Lentils left with too much liquid turn soupy once the white sauce is added. Driving off the water lets the lentils absorb the sauce and hold a thick, spoonable texture.

Swap the lentils

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, sauce, 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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