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Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made with cocoa-nut, rice flour, stock, and seasonings.

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 stock

  1. Remove the dark rind from a fresh cocoa-nut and grate it finely. Weigh the grated cocoa-nut and use 5 oz for the soup.

  2. Simmer the cocoa-nut in 5 pints of stock for 1 hour.

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

Thicken and season

  1. Mix 5 oz of rice flour with 1 pint of cream and add to the strained stock.

  2. Add mace, cayenne, and salt, and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. 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 nutty, rich flavour and body while simmering in the stock.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Veal stock
Forms the savoury base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour and cream to the stock. Starch from rice flour thickens liquid only when it is well dispersed and heated; if it is added in lumps or not cooked through, the soup stays grainy or floury. Mixing the flour with cream first helps it blend evenly into the hot stock.

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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