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Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made from grated coconut, stock, mace, egg yolks, and thickened with arrowroot or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coconut

  1. Scrape or grate the inside of the cocoa-nuts finely.

Make the soup

  1. Place the cocoa-nuts in a saucepan with the white stock and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with a little stock and enough arrowroot or ground rice to thicken the soup.

  4. Mix the egg mixture into the soup gradually, stirring carefully until thickened.

  5. Do not allow the soup to boil to prevent curdling.

  6. Optionally, substitute cream for the eggs.

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 + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Nuts + arrowroottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

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

  5. Cocoa + arrowroottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa-nuts
Provide the main coconut flavour and body of the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a richer, smoother texture when heated gently.
Arrowroot or ground rice
Starch that thickens the soup as it heats.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks curdle when overheated, which spoils the smooth texture. Stirring gently over low heat until thickened keeps the soup silky.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, nuts, egg, arrowroot, 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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