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Lentil Soup

A hearty soup made with lentils, stock, water, herbs, and butter, finished with grated onion and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lentils

  1. Wash the lentils and soak them in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the lentils and add them to a pot with stock, water, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer for about 2 hours until the lentils are tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Press the mixture through a colander and then through a sieve back into the pot.

  2. In a small bowl, rub together the butter and flour, then add to the soup and stir until boiling.

  3. Add the grated onion, bring to a boil, and then pour into a soup tureen.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with fried or toasted 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lentils + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 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
Form the body of the soup and thicken it as they break down during simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the soup as it comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump into lumps. Rubbing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly once the soup boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, thyme, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, thyme, pepper, butter, flour, parsley, bread. 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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