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Cock a Leekie Soup

A Scottish soup of veal, leeks, bacon, and spices simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,326 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cock a Leekie Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. In a pan, combine veal, butter, bacon, cloves, onions, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook over medium heat until a white glaze forms at the bottom.

  3. Add 5 pints of water and simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture, reserving the best pieces of veal.

Prepare the leeks

  1. Blanch the leeks in a gallon of boiling water for 10 minutes, then drain.

  2. Boil the stock with half of the leeks until almost pulpy.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining leeks and the reserved meat, then simmer for another 30 minutes. Serve hot.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + leektop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Releases flavor and gelatin into the stock, giving it body and richness.
Leeks
Break down into a pulpy mass that thickens the soup and adds mild sweetness.
Onions
Cooked slowly in fat, they add sweetness and savory depth to the base.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds savory, smoky flavor to the stock.
Butter
Carries flavor from the aromatics and adds richness to the base.

The step that matters

Forming the white glaze over medium heat. Gentle heat slowly draws flavor from the veal, bacon and onions onto the pan bottom. If the heat is too high, the glaze scorches, giving the stock a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, clove, pepper, sugar, leek. 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.

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