Name: Cock-a-leekie Soup
Ingredients: 9 leeks; 1 set giblets; 2 oz beef dripping; 3 quarts water; salt; peppercorns

Why it works: Leek and beef 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

Wash and slice the leeks into pieces about one inch long.
Put the leeks into a saucepan with the beef dripping.

Make the soup

Add the giblets and water.
Season with salt and peppercorns.
Bring to a boil and simmer until the leeks are tender.

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.

Leek + beeftop 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

Leeks: Form the bulk of the soup and soften into tender pieces as they simmer.
Beef dripping: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the leeks as they cook.
Giblets: Release savoury flavour into the water during simmering, forming the base of the broth.

“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.