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Arabian Lentil Flour Soup

A soup made with lentil flour, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Arabian Lentil Flour Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a saucepan, heat olive oil or butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and fry until brown.

  3. Stir in the diced carrots, turnips, and celery.

  4. Pour in 2 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil.

  5. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and season

  1. Mix the lentil flour with a little cold water to form a paste.

  2. Add the lentil mixture to the soup to thicken it.

  3. Season with pepper and additional salt if needed before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Lentil flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body and a heartier texture.
Onions
Frying until brown builds sweet, savory flavor in the base.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften in the soup.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and substance as they cook through.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the lentil flour into a paste before adding it. Lentil flour clumps when dropped straight into hot liquid. Mixing it with cold water first disperses the starch granules so they hydrate evenly and thicken the soup smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, carrot, turnip, celery, olive, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, carrot, turnip, celery, olive, 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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