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Leek Soup

A soup made with a whole fowl, mutton, sliced leeks, suet balls, and optional French dried plums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Leek Soup

Why it works: Pepper and plum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Leek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling.

  2. Place the fowl in a pot with cold water and mutton.

Make the soup

  1. Add sliced leeks to thicken the soup.

  2. Season the soup with pepper and salt.

  3. Make six suet balls using oatmeal instead of flour.

  4. Tie the suet balls in muslin.

  5. Boil the suet balls in the soup to prevent them from breaking.

Serve

  1. Serve the fowl whole in the soup, carved as desired, with optional French dried plums.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + plumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mutton + leektop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

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

  5. Leek + plumtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Leeks
Sliced leeks thicken the soup as they cook and release their body into the broth.
Suet balls
Made with oatmeal, they add a rich, starchy body and substance to the soup.
Fowl
Provides the main meat and flavour, with its richness enriching the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Boil the suet balls in the soup to prevent them from breaking. Suet dumplings are fragile when raw and can fall apart if the liquid is too vigorous. Gentle simmering lets them cook through and hold their shape while the soup stays flavourful.

Swap the plum

The recipe marks plum as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, leek, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumthe original
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, leek, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More leek soup recipes

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