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German Lentil Stock
1/2 pound German lentils 3 pints water 4 ounces carrot 1 teaspoon celery seed 1 ounce butter 1 teaspoon salt 4 ounces onion Soak the lentils all night, then put them in a muslin bag. Cut the carrot and onion into small pieces, and fry in the butter till brown. Add the lentils and the water in which they were soaked, the salt and celery-seed. Boil for two hours; then strain.
This is a foundation stock rather than a finished soup: the lentils are bagged so they flavour the liquid without clouding or thickening it. Everything below assumes you want a clear, savoury broth to build on.
- The muslin bag is the pointTying the soaked lentils in cloth keeps the skins and starch out of the liquid, so the stock strains clear. A large tea filter, a jelly bag, or doubled cheesecloth tied loosely — the lentils swell — does the same job.
- German lentilsThese are the small brown or grey-green field lentils sold today simply as brown lentils; Puy or Pardina work equally well. Avoid red or split lentils, which collapse to purée and will push through the cloth.
- Weights to volumesHalf a pound of lentils is about 1 1/4 cups dry. Four ounces each of carrot and onion is roughly one medium carrot and one medium onion. Three pints in British imperial measure is about 60 fl oz, roughly 1.7 litres; if the book is American, 3 pints is 6 cups (1.4 litres).
- Keep the soaking waterThe instruction to use the water the lentils soaked in is deliberate; some flavour and colour leaches out overnight. Top up to the original quantity if some has been absorbed.
- Brown the vegetables properlyMuch of the colour of the finished stock comes from this step. Take the carrot and onion past soft to genuinely browned at the edges, eight to ten minutes over medium heat, before the liquid goes in.
- Boil means simmerTwo hours at a rolling boil will reduce the pot substantially and agitate the bag against the sides. Hold it at a bare simmer, lid ajar; 60 to 90 minutes is generally enough to extract the flavour, and you can stop when the liquid tastes savoury rather than watery.
- Celery seed is strongA teaspoon of celery seed in 6 cups is assertive and turns slightly bitter over a long simmer. Add half at the start and the rest in the last fifteen minutes if you want the aroma without the edge.
- Yield and what to do with the lentilsExpect a somewhat reduced volume after straining, depending on whether the pints are imperial or American. The cooked lentils in the bag are still good food — season them and use them as a side, in a salad, or mashed into a patty.
Meatless cookery books of the early twentieth century faced one structural problem: nearly every classical soup, sauce and gravy in the repertoire began with meat stock. Compilers answered with a small family of vegetable and pulse stocks meant to stand in at the same point in the method, and lentils were among the bases used, since they give a brown colour and a savoury depth that celery, carrot and onion alone do not. The name "German lentils" appears to reflect the trade in small brown continental lentils, long associated with German and central European cooking, where lentil soup was a staple of everyday and Lenten tables; the term seems to have functioned as a market description of the variety rather than as a claim about the recipe's origin. The muslin bag is an older kitchen habit that turns up in Victorian and Edwardian cookery — herbs, spices, barley and rice were all bagged so that a stock could be strained clean without a fine sieve.