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Cock-A-Leekie
Boil a young fowl in two quarts of white stock until it is tender. Take it up and put it aside. Wash two bunches of fine leeks. Trim away the roots and part of the heads, and cut them into one-inch lengths. Put them into the broth, and add half a pound of boiled rice and a little pepper and salt. Boil half an hour. Cut the fowl into neat joints, put it into the soup, boil up, and serve very hot. The above is true Cock-a-Leekie soup. The soup bearing this name is, however, as often served without the fowl as with it. Time, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A straightforward boiled fowl soup, but two of its measurements need translating and one of its timings will destroy the leeks.
- The fowlA "young fowl" here would be a bird of perhaps 3-4 lb, not a modern fast-grown broiler. Any whole chicken of about that weight works; simmer it gently rather than at a rolling boil, until the leg joint moves freely -- the recipe's total of an hour and a half leaves roughly an hour for the bird.
- White stockWhite stock is made without browning the bones (veal or chicken), so the finished soup stays pale. Two quarts here is an imperial measure, about 2.3 litres; a light chicken stock is the nearest thing on a supermarket shelf.
- "Two bunches of fine leeks"Genuinely imprecise; judge it by the amount of soup, six to eight medium leeks being a workable reading. Split them lengthwise and rinse between the layers, since grit hides there and the recipe's "wash" assumes you know it.
- Half an hour is too longHalf an hour is long -- Inch lengths of leek go very soft over half an hour. Ten to twelve minutes at a bare simmer gives you leek you can still see and taste, though the original clearly intends them thoroughly tender.
- The rice is already cooked"Half a pound of boiled rice" means half a pound after boiling, roughly 1 1/2 cups cooked, added to thicken and body the broth. Adding half a pound of raw rice would give you a porridge.
- Season at the endThe "little pepper and salt" may be doing most of the seasoning work, depending on how the stock was made. Taste once the bird is back in and correct then; white pepper keeps the appearance right.
- Jointing and reheatingThe original cuts the bird into neat joints, bone included; take the meat off if you prefer. Return it only long enough to heat through, as boiled again in earnest it goes stringy.
- Yield and costEight or nine portions as a first course, five or six as a supper. The "3s." is three shillings, a price note for a household comparing dishes; it works out at a few pence a head but says nothing certain about how cheap the dish was thought to be.
Cock-a-leekie is long associated with Scotland; the name is simply cock and leek. The classic version used a tough boiling cock whose long simmering gave both broth and meat, and many older Scottish recipes include prunes, which Cassell's here omits. The closing remark that the soup is "as often served without the fowl as with it" suggests the boiled bird was sometimes lifted out and served separately.