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Soup

Cock-a-leekie Soup

A soup made with chicken, beef, leeks, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and leek work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 659 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cock-a-leekie Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling.

  2. Place the fowl and beef in a pan with enough water to cover.

Cook

  1. Add the sliced leeks.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

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. Beef + leektop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Gives the soup its main poultry flavour and rich body as it simmers.
Beef
Adds savoury depth and richness to the broth as it cooks.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam after the boil. Foam rising from the meat and fowl carries impurities that can cloud the broth and affect its flavour, so removing it keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

“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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