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LENTILS (a la Creme)
Soak half a pint of lentils in cold water for twelve hours. Put them into salted boiling water, and boil them for three hours. Strain them, add a quarter of a pint of thick cream, and a seasoning of pepper and salt, simmer for three or four minutes, and serve very hot.
A plain dish of pulses finished with cream, from a book that measured dry goods by volume and cooked lentils far longer than anyone does now. Two numbers need adjusting: the soak and the boil.
- Three hours is the thing to ignoreModern brown or green lentils are tender in 20-30 minutes, red split lentils in 15. Three hours was written for older, harder-dried stock and will reduce today's lentils to a grey puree.
- Half a pint of lentilsAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz by volume, roughly 1¼ US cups or about 8 oz / 225 g of dry lentils. That makes a generous side dish for three or four.
- SoakingTwelve hours is unnecessary for anything sold today, and split red lentils should never be soaked at all. An hour is ample for whole brown or green lentils, or skip it and add a few minutes to the simmer.
- A quarter of a pint of creamFive imperial fluid ounces, so a scant ⅔ cup. \"Thick cream\" here means what is now sold as double cream or heavy cream — anything lighter will thin out rather than coat.
- Salted boiling waterSalt in the cooking water is fine and improves the seasoning throughout; the old worry that it toughens pulses applies mainly to very hard water and very old beans. Acid is the real culprit, so keep tomato or vinegar out until the lentils are soft.
- Strain thoroughlyWet lentils will dilute the cream into a puddle. Drain well and let them steam dry in the pan for a moment before the cream goes in.
- The final simmerThree or four minutes is right — long enough to thicken slightly, short enough that the cream does not split. Season after the cream, not before, since reduction concentrates the salt.
Lentils were cheap, keepable and associated in Victorian Britain with plain living, Lenten meals and the vegetarian cookery then gaining a foothold in reform circles. The pulse itself is one of the oldest cultivated foods of the Near East and reached the English kitchen mainly as a soup ingredient or an economical stand-in for meat. The "à la crème" tag is doing quiet social work — the French formula and the quarter pint of thick cream lift a poor man's staple towards a dinner table, the sort of upgrade by garnish that late nineteenth-century household books favoured.