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Lentil Soup, Green

A hearty soup made with green lentils, vegetables, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil Soup, Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils overnight.

  2. Wash and drain the lentils, then add them to boiling water.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Cook and strain

  1. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours, or until the lentils are soft.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, then add the cream or milk.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, stir, and boil gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with fried or toasted croutons of bread.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lentils + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 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

Green lentils
Break down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Spinach
Adds color and a mild, fresh vegetal flavor to the soup.
Onion
Builds savory sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the soup.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining breaks down and removes fibrous vegetable and lentil skins, giving the soup a smooth texture. Pushing too little or leaving it unstrained leaves the soup grainy or uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, spinach, carrot, turnip, allspice, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, spinach, carrot, turnip, allspice, celery, parsley. 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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