Cock-a-Leekie
INGREDIENTS for 4 quarts of soup. A capon or large fowl (sometimes an old cock, from which the recipe takes its name, is used), which should be trussed as for boiling, 2 or 3 bunches of fine leeks, 5 quarts of stock (see STOCK), pepper and salt to taste. AVERAGE COST, 5s. 6d.
Wash the leeks well (and, if old, scald them in boiling water for a few minutes), taking off the roots and part of the heads, and cut them into lengths of about an inch.
Put the fowl into the stock, with, at first, one half of the leeks, and allow it to simmer gently. In half an hour add the remaining leeks, and then it may simmer for 3 or 4 hours longer. It should be carefully skimmed, and can be seasoned to taste. In serving, take out the fowl and COCOA-NUT CANDY. carve it neatly, placing the pieces in a tureen, and pouring over them the soup, which should be very thick of leeks (a purée of leeks, the French would call it).
TIME.-4 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter. would then be merely called leek soup, is very Note. Without the fowl, the above, which good, and also economical.
A long-simmered fowl-and-leek broth that depends on the leeks half but not all breaking down. Two points of confusion in this text are typographical rather than culinary: the headings COCOA-NUT PALM and COCOA-NUT CANDY are stray running heads from neighbouring entries and belong to nothing in this recipe.
- The birdA capon is a castrated cockerel, richer and larger than a table chicken and now hard to find outside specialist butchers; an "old cock" is a spent breeding bird with tough, deeply flavoured flesh. Either a 4-5 lb chicken or, better for this dish, a boiling fowl will stand in.
- Timing follows the bird, not the clockThree to four hours suits a tough old bird. A modern supermarket chicken is falling apart at 90 minutes and the breast is dry well before that; lift it out when the leg pulls free, keep it warm, and let the leeks go on cooking in the stock.
- Leek quantity"2 or 3 bunches of fine leeks" is genuinely vague — Victorian bunches varied. Aim for enough that the finished soup is, as the recipe insists, very thick with them: roughly 3-4 lb trimmed weight for 4 quarts is in the right territory.
- Two additions of leeksThis is the hinge. The first half is meant to disintegrate into the broth and thicken it; the second, added half an hour in, keeps some shape and bite. Ignore the split and you get either watery soup or grey mush.
- Scalding old leeksThe recipe calls for brief blanching only "if old", presumably to soften the harshness of coarse winter leeks. Slim modern leeks do not need it — just split them lengthways and wash out the grit trapped between the layers.
- Stock and reductionFive quarts of stock yields four quarts of soup, so roughly a fifth cooks away. Use unsalted or lightly salted stock and season only at the end, since the reduction concentrates whatever salt is already there.
- SkimmingSkim in the first twenty minutes while the scum is grey and coagulating, and again for fat once the fowl is out. A capon or boiling fowl throws considerably more fat than a modern chicken.
- Yield and servingFour quarts is generous for eight as a first course, or six as a meal. The carved fowl goes into the tureen and the soup over it, so carve into pieces small enough to eat with a spoon.
- Cost5s. 6d. was a substantial outlay in Beeton's day, with the bird the largest single item — which is presumably why the closing note offers the leek-only version.
Cock-a-leekie is Scotland's national soup, recorded under that name from at least the eighteenth century, and the recipe carries its own etymology: an old cock, past use in the yard, boiled long enough to give up everything it had. Beeton's account is unusual in leaving out prunes, which many Scottish versions add for a sweet counterweight to the leeks and which are often said to have arrived with the French connections of the Scottish court, though the claim is traditional rather than documented. What the entry does capture is the household logic of the dish — a bird too tough to roast, a vegetable that keeps all winter in the ground, and a note at the end explaining how to make the same soup when there is no bird to spare at all.