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Some Kitchen Kinks: Lentils
Lentils. Lentils may be cooked in purées, soups, etc., like Cried beans.
Baked Lentils. 1 quart lentils. 1 quart water. 6 ounces mixed salt pork. 1 clove of garlic or 1 small onion. 1 generous teaspoonful salt. 1/2 teaspoonful pepper.
Pick over and wash the lentils.
Soak in cold water overnight. In the morning pour off the water and put the lentils in a stewpan with two quarts of cold water and place on the fire. As soon as the water begins to boil the lentils will rise to the top. Take them off with a skimmer and put them in a deep earthen dish, with the pork and onion in the center. Mix the pepper and salt with a quart of boiling water and add. Put the dish in a moderate oven, and cook slowly for four or five hours.
The lentils must be kept moist, and it may be necessary to add a little water from time to time. If the pork is not very salt the dish may require a little more salt.
Stewed lentils are prepared in about the same manner, but using more water. Instead of pork, fat corned beef or the shank of a ham may be employed.
A baked-bean method applied to lentils, from an era when the bean pot lived in the oven all afternoon. Most of the adjustment needed is downward: lentils are not dried beans and will not take four hours without collapsing.
- Cooking time is the hingeBrown or green lentils cooked covered in a moderate oven are tender in 60 to 90 minutes, and the small red or split kinds in far less. Four or five hours will reduce them to a grey purée. Treat the long baking as a period habit carried over from navy beans rather than an instruction to follow.
- Skip the overnight soakLentils cook through without soaking, and soaked ones fall apart faster still. If you soak anyway, cut the baking time roughly in half and watch closely.
- A moderate oven350F. If you want the slow, unhurried result the text implies, 300 to 325F with the dish covered is closer to the original intent.
- QuantitiesA quart of dry lentils is about 1 lb 12 oz, or roughly 4 cups, which will feed eight to ten generously. Halve it for a family meal.
- Mixed salt porkMost likely salt pork with both lean and fat streaks. Slab bacon or pancetta stands in; unsmoked is closer to the original. Rinse it if very salty; note that the recipe adds the salt with the boiling water at the start and only says the dish 'may require a little more salt' if the pork is not very salt.
- The deep earthen dishAny lidded casserole or Dutch oven. The point of glazed earthenware was slow, even heat with little evaporation, so cover it rather than adding water repeatedly.
- Skimming the risen lentilsThe recipe does not say why; plausibly it leaves behind grit, loose skins and any floating debris after the first boil. Modern lentils are cleaner, but a quick rinse and a look through for small stones is still worth the minute.
- Ham shank versionIf you use the shank instead of pork, the meat wants longer than the lentils. Simmer it separately first, then combine, or the lentils will overcook before the shank gives up anything.
Lentils were among the least fashionable pulses in Anglo-American cookery of the late nineteenth century, associated either with continental European cooking or with vegetarian and economy diets, and a household compendium of this sort files them as a variation on "dried beans" rather than giving them a chapter. The method here closely resembles that used for baked beans: pork and onion buried in the center, salted water added by degrees, hours in a slow oven in a glazed earthen pot. The technique reflects a kitchen with a coal or wood range that generally held gentle heat all day at little extra cost, so a five-hour bake was economical in a way it is not now. The suggestion to substitute fat corned beef or a ham shank is the period's usual thrift: the pulse supplies the substance, and a small piece of cured meat supplies the seasoning.