Cock-a-Leekie: Chicken, Leeks and the Prune Question

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Moryson's description is of a similar dish rather than one named cock-a-leekie. Claims that the soup is medieval or French in origin are speculative. The folklorist F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (1929; revised 1963) collects most of the older testimony used here, quoting Meg Dods, Christopher North and others; her report of the Fastern's E'en custom rests on a 1916 local paper and is a single source. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014) supplies the modern reference view of the dish and the natural history of the leek.

The soup

established Cock-a-leekie is made by simmering a chicken, traditionally an old boiling fowl or cockerel, in water or stock with plenty of leeks. The meat is shredded back into the soup, and more leeks are added near the end for colour. Some recipes thicken it with rice or barley, and many add prunes.

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929), gives the traditional method. A cock or plump fowl is simmered in good veal or beef stock with a few chopped leeks for two hours or more, then lifted out; the rest of the leeks, cut in inch lengths, go in with salt and Jamaica pepper (allspice), and a dozen unbroken prunes are added half an hour before serving, with a little minced fowl if wanted. She quotes Meg Dods's rule that the soup "must be very thick of leeks", the first of them boiled down until the soup becomes "a lubricous compound". Leeks were the point of the dish: Meg Dods also claimed that "porridge" came from the Latin for leek, a derivation McNeill repeats and which should be treated as a curiosity rather than settled fact. The Latin she had in mind is porrum, still the botanical name of the cultivated leek.

established The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) describes the modern consensus. Recipes now make one dish rather than two, cutting up the chicken before the soup is served, and almost all of them insist that chicken and leeks together give plenty of solid matter. Onions have kept their place. Raisins have largely gone. The prunes remain the argument.

The leek

established The Companion traces the cultivated leek (Allium porrum) to the wild A. ampeloprasum. The ancient Egyptians bred thick-stemmed leeks and painted them in tombs. The Romans ranked the leek above the onion and garlic, which they thought coarse, and Apicius gives four recipes for it as a vegetable in its own right. The emperor Nero ate so many, believing they helped his singing voice, that he was nicknamed Porrophagus, the leek-eater.

shared When the leek reached Britain is unclear. The Companion notes that Old English leac meant any onion or garlic, so early references may not mean the modern leek, and some early botanical writers thought the true leek arrived late. By 1633 Gerard could call it common in England.

established The long white shank is made by earthing up the plant, which blanches and compresses the leaf bases. The Companion points out why leeks suit soup: besides their mild, sweet flavour, they are slightly mucilaginous and help to thicken the liquid. That is the "lubricous compound" Meg Dods was after. Cock-a-leekie appears in the Companion's list of the great leek soups, alongside vichyssoise and the French pot-au-feu.

established Scotland's leeks. Annette Hope, in A Caledonian Feast (1987), shows how much leeks mattered in Scottish gardens. Onions, leeks and kail recur in royal and monastic seed accounts from the Middle Ages. In 1741 John Cockburn of Ormiston, writing from London to his gardener in East Lothian, warned him not to "fall short in Onions and Leeks this year as you have commonly done", and a month later reminded him that "we use many Leeks in Soups" (as quoted by Hope). The horticulturist Patrick Neill, in 1813, praised a "Scots Leek" above all others, and in 1885 William Robinson's English edition of Vilmorin-Andrieux's The Vegetable Garden wrote that the leek's fine qualities were "much better known to the Welsh, Scotch, and French than to the English or Irish". Robinson described the Musselburgh leek, raised near Edinburgh, as an improved long winter leek with a thicker stem and broad leaves. Hope suggests, without proof, that it grew from a strain already developed in the Musselburgh market gardens of the early nineteenth century.

shared Hope also laments the near-disappearance of the old boiling fowl. Cock-a-leekie made with a young bird takes about half the time, she writes, but the result is not quite the same.

The prunes

established Many traditional recipes add prunes to the soup shortly before serving, giving a sweet contrast to the leeks. Some cooks consider them essential; others leave them out. The debate is long-standing and good-humoured.

established McNeill collects the older argument. In John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae, written as "Christopher North", the Ettrick Shepherd declares that "the man was an atheist that first polluted it with prunes", which give it "a sickenin' sweetness". Meg Dods tells how Talleyrand, at a dinner given by Lord Holland, asked Francis Jeffrey whether prunes were essential and, getting no clear answer, decided they should be boiled in the soup but taken out before it was served. She thought cock-a-leekie à la Talleyrand "worthy of trial". The French chef Alexis Soyer, as quoted by McNeill, preferred cock-a-leekie to any other Scottish soup, even hotch-potch. McNeill herself was "all for the addition of prunes, to be served one in each plate".

established The Oxford Companion to Food summarises the same quarrel and suggests comparing the dish with Hindle Wakes, the Lancashire dish of a boiled chicken stuffed with prunes. Chicken and prunes together, in other words, were not a Scottish peculiarity.

Fastern's E'en

shared McNeill records that in the days of cock-fighting, a "fugie", the beaten bird, made into cock-a-leekie was the usual Fastern's E'en (Shrove Tuesday) supper in the Lowlands, citing T. Wilkie in the Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club (1916). Cock-fighting at Shrovetide was a known Scottish custom, so the story is plausible, but this account rests on a single local source.

An old combination

established Fynes Moryson, an English traveller who visited Scotland in 1598, described dining at a knight's house where the table was "more than half furnished with great platters of porredge", while "the upper messe, insteede of Porredge, had a Pullet with some prunes in the broth" (as quoted by McNeill). The passage is often cited as evidence that the combination of chicken and prunes was established in Scotland by the late sixteenth century. McNeill footnotes it as cock-a-leekie; Moryson himself gives no name.

shared The food historian Annette Hope, in A Caledonian Feast (1987), reads the passage more generously than most. Moryson's host was a man of standing on the Border, and in her translation the "porridge" was barley broth with pot-herbs and a piece of boiled meat, while the top table had a soup of chicken, vegetables and prunes. She argues that Moryson misread a well-provided household as a poor one. Her rendering adds vegetables that Moryson does not mention, on the grounds that pot-herbs always went into broth; that is a reasonable inference, not his words. She also notes that a decree of 1602 set the masters' dinner at Glasgow University at broth and kail or skink, boiled mutton and beef, and two roasts, which shows that broth-based dinners were not a sign of poverty.

traditional Hope repeats the story that James VI was very fond of cock-a-leekie, and says plainly that when and where it evolved is unknown. She sees it growing out of the ordinary way of dealing with an old bird: boiling it in a big pot with plenty of vegetables to make a one-dish meal.

shared The Companion says the dish is "commonly said to date back to medieval times", when it held onions and prunes or raisins and was probably served as two dishes, the chicken and the broth. Moryson's pullet in broth with prunes fits that picture, and McNeill's description of the bird lifted out of the pot fits the two-course habit. But no medieval recipe under the name has been produced, so the medieval origin remains a likely story, not a documented one.

Name and recipes

established The name "cock-a-leekie" is recorded from the eighteenth century, and the soup appears in nineteenth-century cookbooks, including Meg Dods's Cook and Housewife's Manual (1826), which discusses prunes and recommends trying Talleyrand's method of removing them before serving. Scott's use of "cockyleeky" in The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), put in the mouth of James VI, suggests that Scott thought of it as an old Scottish dish.

• Cock-a-leekie was traditionally made with an old cockerel.
• Many recipes include prunes.
• A visitor described chicken and prunes in broth in 1598.
• It is a popular Burns Supper starter.
• The name is recorded from the eighteenth century.
• Talleyrand is said to have boiled the prunes in the soup and taken them out before serving.
• In cock-fighting days a defeated cock could end up as the Fastern's E'en cock-a-leekie.
• McNeill liked one prune in each plate.
• The emperor Nero was nicknamed "leek-eater" for his devotion to the vegetable.
• Leeks are slightly mucilaginous, which is why they thicken a soup.

• Disputed: Whether prunes belong in the soup. Many traditional recipes add them shortly before serving, and some cooks consider them essential while others leave them out. The quarrel was already lively in the early nineteenth century, and Talleyrand's compromise was to boil them in the soup and remove them before serving.
• Myth: Fynes Moryson described cock-a-leekie in 1598. He described a pullet with some prunes in the broth, a similar dish, and gave it no name. McNeill is the one who glosses it as cock-a-leekie.
• Disputed: Whether cock-a-leekie is medieval or French. The Companion says only that it is "commonly said" to be medieval. No medieval recipe under the name has been produced, so a medieval origin is a likely story, not a documented one.
• Myth: Every early English "leek" was the modern leek. Old English leac meant any onion or garlic, and when the leek reached Britain is unclear.
• Disputed: Cock-a-leekie as the Fastern's E'en supper. McNeill says a beaten fighting cock made into the soup was the usual Shrove Tuesday supper in the Lowlands, but this rests on a single local source of 1916.
• Myth: Meg Dods simply included prunes. She discussed them and recommended trying Talleyrand's method of removing them before serving.
• Disputed: James VI's fondness for the soup. The story is repeated by Annette Hope, who says plainly that when and where the soup evolved is unknown.
• Disputed: What Moryson's host served. Hope's modern rendering of his passage adds vegetables he does not mention. That is a reasonable inference, not his words.