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Scotch Leek Soup

A soup made with mutton stock, leeks, pepper, sea salt, and oatmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 boiling the leg of mutton into a stewpan.

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

  3. Simmer for one hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix oatmeal with a little water until smooth.

  2. Pour the oatmeal mixture into the soup.

  3. Set the stewpan on low heat and let it simmer gently, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

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

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

  3. 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 starches swell and gelatinize during gentle simmering.
Chopped leeks
Provide the main vegetable body and mild onion-like sweetness to the soup.
Water from boiling a leg of mutton
Serves as the flavorful meat-based broth that forms the soup's base.

The step that matters

Stirring the oatmeal into the soup. Oatmeal left unstirred on direct heat can settle and scorch on the pan bottom, and whole mixing with a smooth slurry helps it disperse evenly so it thickens without lumps or burning.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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