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Whole French Lentil Soup

A lentil soup made with soaked lentils, carrots, onions, salt, pepper, and water, served with fried toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 505 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Whole French Lentil Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the lentils for 24 hours.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil the lentils with water for 3 hours, stirring often.

  2. Pass the mixture through a colander.

  3. Simmer the soup again for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried toast.

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 + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Onions
Browning in butter adds deep, savory flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the lentils for 3 hours. Lentils must soften fully to break down into a smooth soup. Stirring often and keeping the heat moderate prevents the lentils from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the lentils

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, butter, 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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