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Cockie Leekie

A hearty soup made by simmering chicken and leeks with barley, parsley, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 142 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Prepare the fowl as for boiling and place it in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt and bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Prepare the leeks

  1. Cut the roots and part of the green stalks off the leeks.

  2. Wash the leeks in cold water, slice them thinly, wash them again, and drain them in a colander.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the leeks and washed barley to the soup.

  2. Simmer for 2 more hours, or until the chicken is tender.

  3. Cut up the fowl.

  4. Serve the fowl in the soup or as a separate course.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Leek + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Leek + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Parsley + white peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Barley + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together630 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Leek + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Old fowl
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavouring the broth.
Leeks
Mild onion-like flavour that sweetens as it cooks into the broth.
Barley
Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after bringing to a boil. A rolling boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth. A gentle simmer keeps the fowl tender and the soup clear.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, barley, parsley):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, barley, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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