Lentiles
Stew one teacupful of lentiles in salt and water until tender. To two tablespoonfuls of lentiles, add one of bread 1 crumbs and one egg. Season with soup powder, fry in little cakes in plenty of butter.
A short, elliptical recipe for fried lentil cakes, with proportions that need thinking through before you start.
- The proportions are ambiguousA teacupful of lentils cooks up to well over two tablespoonfuls, so the second sentence is a ratio, not a total: roughly two parts cooked lentils to one part breadcrumbs. One egg per two tablespoons of lentils would be far too wet — figure on one egg per cup or so of the lentil-and-crumb mixture, adding more crumbs until the mass just holds a shape.
- TeacupfulPeriod books are not consistent about the teacup; it is variously reckoned at anything from a gill to about three-quarters of a standard cup, so treat it as smaller than a modern measuring cup rather than a fixed quantity. A cup of dry lentils yields roughly two and a half cups cooked; less in proportion for a smaller teacup.
- Which lentilsBrown or green lentils hold enough shape to be mashed into a cake; red or split lentils collapse into purée and will need considerably more crumb. No soaking is needed — 20 to 30 minutes at a simmer is enough for tender." Overcooked lentils make a paste that will not fry cleanly.
- Soup powderMost likely a dried savoury seasoning base; bouillon powder or a stock cube crushed fine will do the same work, though a dried herb-and-vegetable soup seasoning is also possible. Whatever you use is likely salty, so taste before adding more salt, and remember the lentils were already cooked in salted water.
- Frying in butter"Plenty of butter" over a moderate heat will brown before the cakes are heated through if the milk solids scorch. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better. Chill the shaped cakes for 20 minutes first and they are far less likely to break in the pan.
- Yield and servingA scant cup of dry lentils should make something like eight small cakes, enough for three or four as a course. They want something sharp alongside -- a tomato sauce, or a brown gravy.
Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods of the Near East, and the name comes through Latin lens, for the flat disc shape later borrowed by opticians. Lentil cakes bound with egg and crumb and fried in butter are often said to have been a fixture of late nineteenth-century cookery writing — cheap, high in protein, and shaped and sauced to occupy the place on the plate where a cutlet would otherwise go. The terse, assume-you-know style of the instructions is generally taken as typical of the period.