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Scotch Leek Soup

A soup made with mutton stock, leeks, oatmeal, and suet dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 965 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Leek Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Pour the water from the boiled leg of mutton into a stew pot.

  2. Add chopped leeks, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Simmer for one hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix oatmeal with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Pour the oatmeal mixture into the soup and simmer gently, ensuring it does not burn.

  3. Before serving, add the suet dumplings to the soup.

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. Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  4. Leek + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + leektop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Thickens the broth as its starch swells and softens during gentle simmering.
Fresh suet
Melts and softens into the broth, adding richness and body to the dumplings.
Chopped leeks
Soften during simmering and release mild onion-like sweetness into the broth.

The step that matters

Pour the oatmeal mixture into the soup and simmer gently. Oatmeal settles and scorches easily on the pot base at high heat. Gentle simmering with stirring keeps it from burning and lets the starch thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, leek, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, leek, pepper. 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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