Skip to main content
Main

Cock-a-leexie

A boiled chicken served with a thick leek soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Leek and pepper work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 965 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-hexanol, which smells resin, flower. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leeks

  1. Wash the leeks well.

  2. Scald the leeks if old.

  3. Remove the roots and part of the heads.

  4. Cut the leeks into 1-inch lengths.

Simmer the soup

  1. Place the fowl in the stock with half of the leeks.

  2. Simmer gently.

  3. Add the remaining leeks.

  4. Continue to simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  5. Skim the surface carefully.

  6. Season to taste.

Serve

  1. Remove the fowl.

  2. Carve it neatly.

  3. Place the pieces in a tureen.

  4. Pour the thick leek soup over them.

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. 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

Leeks
Break down during long simmering to thicken the broth and add mild onion flavour.
Old fowl
Releases gelatin and flavour into the stock during long, gentle simmering, giving body to the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and cooks the leeks and fowl.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. A gentle simmer keeps the fowl tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens the meat and breaks the broth into a cloudy, greasy liquid.

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Leek SoupIllustrationLeek Soup31 recipesIllustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Mutton BrothIllustrationMutton Broth292 recipes