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Cocoanut Soup

A soup made from grated coconut, beef broth, rice, and cream, seasoned with salt, mace, and optional cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cocoanut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine grated coconut and beef broth in a pot.

  2. Cook slowly for about 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Finish the soup

  1. Add ground rice to the strained broth and season with salt and mace.

  2. If desired, add a little cayenne pepper.

  3. Heat the cream and stir it into the soup just before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grated coconut
Adds coconut flavour and body to the broth as it cooks.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's savoury flavour.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens in the hot liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream just before serving. Cream held at a hard boil can split and curdle, and it thins the soup's texture if it is cooked too long. Heating it gently and adding it at the end keeps the soup smooth and rich.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, cream, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, cream, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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