Skip to main content
Main

Leek Soup, Common Called Cock-a-Leek

A hearty soup made with fowl, leeks, spinach, parsley, and optional beef or prunes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Leek and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Leek Soup, Common Called Cock-a-Leek

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling and place it in a pot.

  2. Add the beef if using, and cover with water.

  3. Stew until the fowl is nearly tender.

  4. Cut the white part of the leeks with a little green, about 1 inch long, and add to the pot.

  5. Add spinach and parsley, and stew until rich and flavorful.

  6. Season with pepper and salt.

  7. If desired, add French prunes and serve with the fowl in a tureen.

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 + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Gives the long-simmered broth its body and rich, savory flavor.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Spinach
Adds leafy, vegetal flavor and color to the soup.
French prunes
Add sweetness and a fruity note to the soup.

Swap the leek

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, spinach, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, spinach, parsley, 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.

More leek soup recipes

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes