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then drained in a colander. Place two tablespoons of butter in a frying-pan, and when it is melted add the lentils, with salt and pepper to season; stir them over the fire for fifteen minutes, and serve.
The page picks up mid-method: the lentils have already been boiled and drained before the butter goes into the pan. What follows is a simple sauté, but the timing and the missing quantities both need attention.
- The missing first halfThe recipe as printed begins after the cooking and draining. Assume brown or green lentils simmered in salted water until just tender — 20 to 25 minutes for whole lentils — then drained well so they do not steam in the butter.
- QuantityNo amount is given. Two tablespoons of butter will comfortably coat about a pound of cooked lentils, serving four to six as a side.
- Fifteen minutes is too longAlready-tender lentils held over heat and stirred for a quarter hour will break down into a coarse purée. Five minutes is enough to heat them through and let the butter carry the seasoning; stop while the lentils still hold their shape.
- Drain thoroughlyThe colander step matters more than it looks. Wet lentils will not take on any colour in the pan and the butter will separate into a greasy film rather than glazing them.
- Choice of lentilThe whole brown or greenish-brown European types hold together and are the likeliest reading of an unspecified lentil here. Red and yellow split lentils collapse entirely when boiled and are not suited to this treatment.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are all the original asks for. The dish takes well to a little onion softened in the butter first, or a spoonful of vinegar or lemon at the end.
Lentils appear only sparingly in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is itself telling: the pulse was strongly associated with continental European and Middle Eastern cooking, and English-language household manuals tended to treat it as a curiosity or an economy food rather than a staple. Butterick, publishing alongside its dress patterns for a broad middle-class readership, included lentils among the vegetables at a time when interest in inexpensive meatless dishes was on the rise — promoted variously by economists of the household, by temperance and health reformers, and by the vegetarian movement, which pointed to the pulse's protein as a substitute for meat. The method here, boil then finish in butter, is a familiar one in books of this era, and it says more about the kitchen's habits than about the lentil.