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Boiled Leeks

A dish of boiled leeks served on toast with a milk and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Leeks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and wash the leeks carefully.

  2. Tie them into bundles and boil in salted water for 5 to 10 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour off the water and cover the leeks with milk (or a mixture of milk and water).

  2. Let them stew for about 20 minutes.

  3. Dish the leeks on toast and keep warm.

  4. Thicken the milk with flour and butter, bring to a boil, season, and pour over the leeks.

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

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

  2. Leek + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Leek + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together848 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leeks
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, mild vegetable.
Milk
Forms the moist, creamy sauce that the leeks stew in and are served with.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the leeks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.
Toast
Provides a base that soaks up the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and milk and brought to a boil so it thickens fully and loses its raw taste. Adding flour directly to hot milk can clump, so whisk it in smoothly.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter. 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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