Full-flavoured, hearty, and comfortingly creamy, is cullen skink the world's finest fish soup?

What is Cullen Skink?

Cullen Skink may sound like an animal, but it’s actually an incredibly flavorful, chowder-type soup originating in Scotland.

If you’re a clam chowder aficionado/a, I’m sure you’ll also love Cullen Skink, which is essentially a smoked haddock chowder. Stuffed full of warming wintery ingredients like smoked fish and starchy potatoes, made rich and comforting with milk or cream, it never fails to cheer, even in the darkest days of January.

Cullen is a fishing town on the Moray Firth, an inlet popular with haddock, while "skink" has a more puzzling history. The New York Times claims it comes from the Middle High German word for a weak beer, which seems to make some of sense for a thin soup, but the Oxford Companion to Food counters that it's a variation of the German "schinke", or ham, denoting a shin specifically: "so the archetypal skink is a soup made from shin of beef". Smokier and more assertive than American chowder, heartier than classical French bisque, it's one of the world's finest seafood soups.

Traditional Scottish Cullen Skink Recipe

Ingredients

1 lb smoked haddock

20 oz (2 1/2 cups) whole milk

1 oz (1/4 stick) good quality butter

8 oz (1 1/2 cups) diced onion or sliced leeks

2 large potatoes, peeled and diced

1 bay leaf

1 leek, washed and cut into chunks

chopped fresh parsley, to serve

Steps