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Soup

Coc^ a Leehie a LA Wemyss

A leek soup made with fowl, prunes, and seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and 57 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the good stock and leeks. Boil slowly for 3 hours.

  2. Add the skinned fowl pieces and prunes to the pot, then simmer all ingredients together for 1 hour longer.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and white pepper before serving.

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

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

  2. Leek + vealtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + white peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Leeks
Provide the main body of flavour and soften into the soup during long simmering.
Fowl
Contributes rich meat flavour and tender pieces that enrich the broth as it cooks.
Prunes
Add sweetness and a soft, fruity depth that balances the savoury broth.
Good stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavours of the soup.

The step that matters

Slow boil and simmer. Boiling the stock too hard can make the broth cloudy and toughen the fowl. A gentle, slow simmer keeps the broth clear and the meat tender while the leeks break down fully.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, veal. 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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