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Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made from veal stock, grated cocoa-nut, rice flour, spices, cream, sugar, soy sauce, lemon juice, 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 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 a fresh 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 cocoa-nut in the stock for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the cocoa-nut out.

  3. Mix the rice flour, mace, cayenne, and salt with the cream.

  4. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

Alternative finish

  1. Alternatively, mix the rice flour with reserved stock, soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, cayenne, and sherry.

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 characteristic flavour and body as it simmers in the stock.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, heavier texture as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the soup.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the alternative finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the soup and balances its richness.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a little sweetness-tinged complexity to the alternative finish.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice flour mixture. Rice flour must be cooked long enough to thicken fully and lose its raw, starchy taste. Stirring it into hot liquid without cooking it through can leave lumps and a floury flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cocoa, 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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