Skip to main content
Soup

Cock-a-leekie Soup

A soup made with a small fowl, carrot, turnip, onion, cloves, leeks, rice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cock-a-leekie Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Truss the fowl for boiling.

  2. Place it in a large pot and cover with enough water.

  3. Add a little salt and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove the scum that forms on top.

  5. Add the cleaned carrot, turnip, and peeled onion stuck with cloves.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Simmering releases its meat and collagen, giving the broth its rich body and savory flavor.
Onion
Cooking softens its sharp bite and releases sweetness and aroma into the broth.
Rice
Its starch thickens the broth slightly as the grains cook and soften.

The step that matters

Remove the scum that forms on top. Proteins and impurities rise to the surface as the water heats. Skimming them keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting muddy or bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, clove, leek, rice, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, clove, leek, rice, 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.

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes