Lentil Soup
1 cup brown lentils 1 teaspoon finely chopped onion 1 tablespoon flour 2 tablespoons oil or butter 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Wash the lentils and soak them overnight. In the morning put them to cook in cold water, and cook slowly for two or three hours, or until thoroughly tender. Rub them through a colander. Brown the onion and flour in the oil. Add these and the salt to the lentil puree, and sufficient hot water to make the soup of the proper consistency. This should make about one quart of soup. The onion, oil, and flour may be omitted, and the soup seasoned with cream or milk.
A plain lentil puree thickened with a browned flour-and-oil roux. The method still works, though modern lentils need far less time than the recipe allows.
- Skip the soak, shorten the cookBrown lentils sold today cook tender in 30-40 minutes without soaking. The two-to-three hours here may reflect older, drier stock; at that length you get puree by collapse rather than by sieving, which is no bad thing if that is your goal.
- Water quantity is not givenThe recipe says only "cold water." Use about 4 cups for 1 cup of lentils to cook them, then thin the finished puree with hot water to taste. The stated yield of one quart is your guide.
- Sieve or blend"Rub them through a colander" means forcing the softened lentils through with a wooden spoon or ladle to leave the skins behind. A blender or food mill does the same in seconds; a stick blender in the pot gives a coarser, rustic result with the skins still in.
- The roux is the flavourCook the tablespoon of flour and the onion in the fat until genuinely nut-brown, not merely warmed. This is the only browning in the dish and the difference between savoury soup and boiled lentil water.
- Salt late if you likeA teaspoon and a half of salt for a quart is reasonable but salting after the lentils are tender gives you more control, particularly if you are also adding milk or cream.
- The dairy variationThe alternative ending -- no onion, oil or flour, finished with cream or milk -- gives a much lighter soup. Add the dairy off the heat and do not let it boil.
- YieldOne quart, so three or four servings as a first course.
Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods in the Near East, and lentil soup is recorded from antiquity onward. A meatless, stockless soup of this kind is consistent with the vegetarian cookery promoted by American health-reform circles around the turn of the twentieth century, when writers were looking for pulses and nuts that could carry a meal on their own, though the recipe itself offers butter as readily as oil. The bland puree with an optional browned-flour seasoning is characteristic: nourishment first, and enough flexibility that a cook avoiding oil could finish the same pot with milk instead.