In Modernist Cuisine, they recommend using calcium chloride when cooking beans to help preventing them from bursting:     Beans often burst after being cooked in ordinary tap water. To avoid this...[a]dd 1g of calcium chloride for every 100g of water to gently firm the outside of the beans, which prevents them from splitting without making them tough.    My question is whether or not this would work for lentils too? I am specifically referring to varieties intended to stay intact such as green or brown lentils rather than the various hulled or split ones used in Indian cooking for dals. 
I finally found the answer to this question: I was in the supermarket yesterday and on a can of lentils the ingredients listed on the side of the tin had the phrase 'firming agent' in brackets beside the entry for calcium chloride. 