Red lentil soup
Turkey’s default soup. Four ingredients, thirty-five minutes and one rule: the lemon is squeezed at the table.
Method
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Soften the onion in butter for five minutes without colouring it.
Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.
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Rinse the lentils, add them with the water, and once it boils drop the heat and leave the lid ajar.
Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
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Simmer for 25 minutes until the lentils collapse. Salt whenever you like — it does not toughen lentils.
Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
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Blend it smooth and add the cumin.
Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
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Squeeze the lemon at the table, never into the pan.
Why Lemon aroma is volatile: simmered in the pan it leaves, and only the sourness stays behind.Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.
peak 130 °C · 38 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low
What it tastes like
No axis sits clearly above the average: a balanced recipe.
This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.
Closest in taste
Not hand-picked: ranked by distance across the eight taste axes.
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