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Soup

Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made by simmering finely grated coconut in stock, thickened with ground rice, seasoned with salt, cayenne, mace, and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and rice share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 93 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the grated cocoa-nut in the stock for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the liquid and thicken it with the ground rice.

  3. Add salt, cayenne, and mace to taste.

  4. Just before serving, remove from heat and stir in the thick cream.

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. Cocoa + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cocoa + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cocoa-nut
Simmered in the stock to infuse it with coconut flavour and body.
Ground rice
Thickens the strained stock into a soup with a smooth, body-rich texture.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, stirred in off the heat so it stays fresh.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cream off the heat. Cream can curdle or separate when it is boiled or kept at a hard simmer, so it is added after the heat is removed to keep the soup smooth and rich.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, rice, cream. 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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