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Cock-A-Leekie
I capon or old fowl 8 or 9 leeks 2 quarts (8 cups) cold water 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley 4 tablespoonfuls rice Salt and white pepper to taste Draw and truss the fowl as for boiling. Put it into a soup pot with the water. Add one teaspoonful of salt and the giblets carefully washed. Bring to boiling point and skim well. Then simmer for two hours, skimming occasionally. Take off the outside skins. Remove the roots and most of the green from the leeks, and split them in halves lengthways. Wash and rinse them well, cut in thin slices and wash again. Drain and add them to the soup with the rice. Simmer until the fowl is tender. To serve, lift out the bird and the giblets from the soup, remove all grease from the top and add the parsley and seasonings.
The fowl may either be served whole with parsley sauce poured over it, or half of it may be cut in neat pieces, then served in the soup, and the other half reserved for croquettes or some other dish. Sometimes this soup is thickened with fine oatmeal. A few stewed prunes are sometimes served in Cock-A-Leekie.
Frequently an old cock is used for making this soup which gives the recipe its name. This soup is an excellent stomachic, and is said to be capable of curing a severe cold. Mrs. Isabella Beeton states that Cock-A-Leekie was largely consumed at the Burns' Centenary Festival at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, 1859.
A straightforward Scottish boiled-fowl soup, but the timings assume a bird that no longer exists in most shops. Two adjustments carry the dish: choose the right chicken, and add the rice near the end rather than with the leeks.
- The birdA capon is a castrated cockerel, fattened for the table; an "old fowl" is a spent laying hen, fatty and far tougher than a supermarket bird — which is why two hours of simmering comes before the vegetables go in. Use a 4-5 lb roasting chicken, or a stewing hen from a farm shop or Asian butcher if you want the deeper flavour the recipe expects.
- Timing for a modern chickenA 4-5 lb chicken is tender in about 75-90 minutes at a bare simmer, not two hours plus. Simmer it 45 minutes, add the leeks, then the rice for the last 20 minutes; longer and the rice disintegrates into the broth.
- WaterTwo quarts barely covers a whole fowl in a narrow pot. Use a deep, snug stockpot so the bird stays submerged, and top up with boiling water rather than cold if the level drops.
- "Draw and truss"Drawing means removing the innards; birds now come drawn. Trussing simply keeps the legs and wings tight against the body so the bird holds its shape for serving whole — a loop of butcher's twine is enough.
- GibletsThe neck, heart and gizzard are what you want in the pot. Leave the liver out or it will muddy and slightly bitter the broth.
- "Take off the outside skins"This line most likely refers to the leeks rather than the fowl, though the recipe's order is ambiguous. Strip the tough outer leaves, then split and wash the halves thoroughly under running water; grit sits in the layers near the base and will not come out with a rinse.
- DegreasingAn old fowl throws a great deal of fat. Skimming the hot surface removes some of it, but chilling the strained broth and lifting the solid cap gives a much cleaner soup — worth making it a day ahead.
- Prunes and oatmealBoth variants are authentic. Fine oatmeal (a tablespoon or two, whisked in and simmered ten minutes) thickens in place of the rice; the prunes are stewed separately and dropped into the bowls so they do not sweeten the whole pot.
- YieldAbout six bowls of soup, plus the meat from the bird — enough for a second dish if you follow the suggestion of reserving half for croquettes.
- The medicinal claim"An excellent stomachic" capable of "curing a severe cold" is period language, not a health claim. Chicken broth is comforting; it is not treatment.
Cock-a-leekie is documented in Scottish cookery from the eighteenth century onward and takes its name plainly from its two components: a cock, generally an old bird past its usefulness in the yard, and leeks, the standby allium of the northern kitchen garden through winter. The prunes that puzzle modern readers are the older form of the dish, and are often explained as a survival of the medieval habit of setting dried fruit against savoury meat, though that reading is an interpretation rather than an established fact. The reference to Mrs Beeton is accurate in substance — the Burns Centenary of 1859 was marked by large public dinners, and the soup's association with Burns suppers has kept it on Scottish menus ever since. Its appearance in a general recipe collection reflects the long reach of Scottish and English cookbooks in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century domestic writing, where a boiled fowl was expected to yield both a soup and a second meal from the same pot.