Skip to main content
Main

Cock-a-leekie

A soup of leeks and fowl simmered in stock, served with carved fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Leek and pepper work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 965 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanol, which smells resin, flower. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling.

  2. Wash the leeks well.

  3. Scald the leeks in boiling water if they are old.

  4. Cut the leeks into 1-inch lengths.

Simmer the soup

  1. Put the fowl into the stock with half of the leeks.

  2. Simmer gently.

  3. After 30 minutes, add the remaining leeks.

  4. Continue to simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  5. Skim the soup carefully.

  6. Season to taste.

Serve

  1. Remove the fowl.

  2. Carve it neatly.

  3. Place the pieces in a tureen.

  4. Pour the thick leek soup over the carved fowl.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

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

What each ingredient does

Capon or large fowl
Gives flavour to the stock as it simmers and provides the meat served in the soup.
Leeks
Soften during long simmering and thicken the soup while adding a mild onion-like flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the fowl and leeks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets the fowl cook through and the leeks break down slowly without turning the broth cloudy. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and make the soup greasy and murky.

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Leek SoupIllustrationLeek Soup31 recipesIllustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Mutton BrothIllustrationMutton Broth292 recipes