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Soup

Cock-a-Leekie

A Scottish soup of boiled chicken, leeks, and stock seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and leek work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 165 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the boiled chicken into small pieces.

  2. Stew the chicken bones in the chicken stock.

  3. Wash and slice the leeks into thin pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Add the leeks to the stock and simmer until tender.

  2. Add the chicken pieces back to the soup.

  3. Season with pepper and salt 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. Chicken + leektop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Chicken + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19,957 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. 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

Boiled chicken
Provides the meat that is returned to the soup for body and substance.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavor from the simmered bones into the soup.
Leeks
Soften during simmering, adding a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer the leeks until tender. Thin leek slices need enough time in the hot stock to soften fully. Undercooked leeks stay fibrous and taste harsh, while long cooking breaks them down further.

“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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