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Leek Soup

A soup made with leeks, potatoes, milk, butter, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Leek Soup

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Leek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the coarse green ends from the leeks and slice them lengthwise to remove grit.

  2. Wash the leeks thoroughly to ensure no grit remains, then cut them into short pieces.

  3. Peel, wash, and chop the potatoes.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the leeks and potatoes in 2 pints of water until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  3. Add the butter, milk, and season with pepper and salt, then bring to a boil.

  4. Before serving, stir in the lemon juice and serve with toast or rusks.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Leek + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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 and mild onion flavour of the soup.
Potatoes
Break down when cooked, thickening the soup and giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Clean the leeks thoroughly. Grit tucks between the layers of leek and survives cooking, so any remaining sand ends up gritty in the finished soup. Slicing lengthwise and rinsing well removes it.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, potato, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, potato, pepper, lemon. 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.

More leek soup recipes

Scotch 9Chicken 4Potato 4Welsh 3 See all 47 →

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