Why it works: Leek and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 161 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the fowl
Boil the young fowl in 2 quarts of white stock until tender.
Remove the fowl and set it aside.
Make the soup
Wash the leeks, trim the roots and part of the heads, and cut them into 1-inch lengths.
Add the leeks to the broth along with the boiled rice, pepper, and salt.
Boil for 30 minutes.
Cut the fowl into neat joints and return it to the soup.
Serve
Bring to a boil and serve very hot.
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.
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Leek + ricetop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together161 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Rice + peppertop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together8,100 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Leek + peppertop 9% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned 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
- Young fowl
- Supplies the meat and rich flavour that the broth takes on as it cooks.
- White stock
- Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.
- Leeks
- Add a mild onion-like flavour and soften into tender pieces during simmering.
- Boiled rice
- Adds body to the soup and soaks up some broth, thickening it slightly.
The step that matters
Simmer the fowl until tender. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the fowl stringy, so a gentle simmer gives more tender joints when they are returned to the soup.
“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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