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Cock-a-leekie Soup

A Scottish soup of chicken, leeks, rice, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Cook the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl.

  2. Place the fowl in a large stock pot with enough water to cover it.

  3. Add a little salt and bring to a boil. Remove the scum.

  4. Add the cleaned carrot, turnip, and onion with cloves.

  5. Once the fowl is tender, remove it from the pot.

Make the soup

  1. Wash the leeks. Trim the roots and outer leaves. Cut them into 1‑inch lengths.

  2. Strain the broth (about 3 pints) into another pot.

  3. Add the leeks and the washed rice. Boil for about 30 minutes.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Cut the fowl in half. Chop one half into small pieces and add to the soup. Reserve the other half for another use.

  6. Before serving, stir in the chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat and the rich flavour of the broth as it simmers.
Leeks
Add the characteristic mild onion flavour and tender texture to the soup.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly and adds body as it cooks in the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer the fowl gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens the meat and clouds the broth, so keep it at a gentle simmer and skim off the scum as it rises.

Swap the onion

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

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

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