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Soup

Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made by simmering grated cocoa-nut in stock, thickened with rice flour, and optionally flavored with soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut

  1. Remove the dark rind from the cocoa-nut and grate it finely.

  2. Weigh the grated cocoa-nut and use 2 ounces for each quart of soup.

Make the soup

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

  2. Strain the stock to remove the cocoa-nut.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the rice flour, mace, cayenne, and salt with ½ pint of cream.

  4. Add this mixture to the strained stock and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. If using, add soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cocoa-nut
Its grated flesh and simmered infusion give the soup its coconut flavour and body.
Rice flour
Thickens the stock so the soup becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Veal stock
Forms the savoury base that carries all the other flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour and cream mixture. Rice flour must be fully mixed into the cream before it meets the hot stock, otherwise it clumps. Cooking it for the full 10 minutes lets the starch swell and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, rice, flour, mace, pepper, cream, sauce):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, flour, mace, pepper, cream, sauce. 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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