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Baked Lentils
1 pint lentils 2 quarts cold water 1 teaspoon lemon juice 2 small onions 4 whole cloves 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1/2 tablespoon mint 1 tablespoon thyme 2 tablespoons summer savory 1 teaspoon sage 4 tablespoons chopped parsley 3 tablespoons butter Wash the lentils, and soak several hours. Cook the lentils with the herbs, onions and cloves tied in a bag, until the water is absorbed, and the lentils are soft but retain their shape. Then remove the bag of seasoning, add three tablespoons butter and the salt, and put the lentils into a buttered dish. Bake a half hour in the oven. Garnish with parsley, and serve.
A straightforward lentil braise finished in the oven. The only real difficulties are the volume measure for dry lentils and the herb quantities, which read as fresh rather than dried.
- A pint of lentilsDry goods were measured by volume: 1 pint is about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz, which will yield 5 to 6 cups cooked. That feeds six as a main dish.
- SoakingModern brown or green lentils do not need soaking and will cook in 25-35 minutes. If you soak them as directed, cut the cooking time and watch closely, since soaked lentils blow apart quickly.
- WaterTwo quarts is far more than 2 cups of lentils will absorb. Start with about 5 cups and add more only as needed, or drain off the excess before buttering; the instruction to cook "until the water is absorbed" is the goal, not the two quarts.
- The herbsTwo tablespoons of summer savory and a tablespoon of thyme make sense as fresh sprigs tied in the bag. With dried herbs use about a third as much or the dish will taste medicinal. Summer savory is worth seeking out; marjoram or thyme are the usual substitutes.
- Bag of seasoningA square of cheesecloth or a tea infuser works; the onions can be halved and left loose if you would rather eat them. The cloves matter more than their quantity suggests, so remove the bag promptly once the lentils are soft.
- Lemon juiceThe teaspoon of lemon juice is listed but never used in the method. Add it at the end with the salt, off the heat, rather than during cooking, since acid slows lentils from softening.
- OvenNo temperature is given, and the recipe uses no descriptive term for the oven either. A moderate oven, around 350F, for the half hour will serve; at this stage it dries the surface and sets the top rather than cooking anything further.
- SaltingThe salt goes in at the end as written, which is fine, but taste again after baking. Lentils absorb seasoning unevenly and 1 1/2 teaspoons for six servings is modest.
Books of this kind are often associated with the First World War, when meat conservation was both a patriotic campaign and a household economy, and "meat substitutes" became a chapter heading rather than a curiosity. Lentils were the obvious candidate: cheap, shelf-stable, high in protein, and long familiar in European cooking though not much eaten in American homes at the time. The heavy hand with herbs here is telling. The pulses are pushed through a bouquet of thyme, sage, savory and clove, then enriched with butter and browned in the oven to give the dish the look and the crust of something roasted. The technique of tying aromatics in a bag rather than chopping them in belongs to an older European kitchen, where a faggot of herbs flavoured the pot and was then thrown away.