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Cocoa-nut Soup

A creamy soup made from grated cocoa-nut, stock, rice flour, spices, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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 oz for each quart of soup.

Make the soup

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

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

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

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

  5. If avoiding cream or wine, reserve ½ pint of stock to mix with the thickening.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Gives the soup its coconut flavour and aroma as it simmers in the stock.
Rice flour
Thickens the stirred-in cream mixture so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a softer, rounder mouthfeel.
Veal stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and rice flour mixture to the strained stock. Rice flour mixed with cream must be added to hot stock gradually and stirred, or it can clump and leave lumps. Cooking it for the stated 10 minutes lets the starch thicken fully and cook out any raw flour taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, veal, rice, flour, pepper, cream, sugar. 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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