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Lentils à La Creole
1/2 cup lentils 1 tablespoon butter 1 green pepper 1 small onion 1 cup tomatoes Salt and pepper 1 cup boiled rice Let the lentils soak over night in water, adding a pinch of baking soda if the water is hard. In the morning, drain; cover with fresh water and let simmer for one half hour; drain again; cover with hot water and let simmer slowly until the lentils are tender. Put the butter in a saucepan and melt; add the pepper and onion, both finely chopped; stir and cook until the butter is browned. Add the tomatoes, canned or raw; season to taste; and into them empty the lentils after they have been drained and mashed through a colander. Cook slowly for about thirty minutes; pour into a deep platter and surround with a border of rice.
A straightforward lentil stew whose only real oddity is the mashing step; a few notes on soaking, timing and quantity.
- The hinge: mash, don't skipThe lentils are pressed through a colander before going into the tomato, which turns the dish into a thick puree rather than a stew of whole lentils. If you want the texture the recipe intends, do it; a food mill or a few pulses with a stick blender is easier than a colander and a spoon.
- Soaking and the sodaModern brown or green lentils need no overnight soak at all — 20 to 30 minutes of simmering brings them to tender. The pinch of baking soda was for hard water, which slows softening; it also dulls the flavour and can make lentils mushy, so leave it out unless your water is very hard.
- The double drainSimmering half an hour, draining, then covering with fresh hot water turns up in other pulse recipes of the period; the recipe itself gives no reason, and the usual explanation offered today is that changing the water carries off some of the gas-forming sugars. With bagged, cleaned lentils one pot of water is enough; rinse well and simmer once.
- "Cook until the butter is browned"This means cooking the pepper and onion in butter until both the butter and the vegetables take colour — about 8 to 10 minutes over medium heat. Butter browns quickly once the vegetable moisture has cooked off, so watch the last two minutes.
- Tomatoes"1 cup tomatoes, canned or raw" is about one 8-oz portion of canned tomatoes with their juice, or two medium fresh tomatoes chopped. Canned gives a more reliable result out of season; if using fresh, allow a little extra cooking time to reduce the water.
- Green pepperOne whole green bell pepper to half a cup of dry lentils is a generous ratio and is the Creole signature here. Use the full pepper — half would leave the dish tasting only of tomato.
- YieldHalf a cup of dry lentils plus a cup of cooked rice serves two as a main course, or four as a side. Scale up freely; the proportions hold.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper only, as written, will taste thin to a modern palate. A bay leaf in the lentil water and a pinch of cayenne or a dash of hot sauce at the end are consistent with the Creole label without changing the dish.
This comes from a "Meat Substitutes" chapter. American cookbooks of the 1910s and early 1920s often carried sections on meatless cookery, encouraged partly by wartime conservation campaigns urging households to save beef and pork, and partly by a growing dietetic interest in the protein value of pulses. Lentils were a cheap, shelf-stable source of that protein and appear in such chapters alongside beans, peas and nuts. The "à la Creole" tag, in books of this period, is usually shorthand rather than geography — it generally signals the tomato, onion and green pepper base associated with New Orleans cooking, here served with a border of rice, and was applied to a wide range of dishes. The instruction to add baking soda for hard water is a reminder of how variable domestic water supplies still were.