Skip to main content
Main

Cocoa-nut Soup

A creamy coconut soup made with grated coconut, beef stock, rice flour, spices, and optional cream, soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 beef stock for 1 hour.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter over low heat until just dissolved.

  3. Add the grated cocoa-nut to the melted butter and brown it to an amber color, stirring constantly.

  4. Strain the soup and mix in the browned cocoa-nut.

  5. In a bowl, combine rice flour, mace, cayenne, salt, and cream (if using).

  6. Mix this with a pint of the stock and add to the soup, stirring well.

  7. If using, add soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry to taste.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa-nut
Simmered into the stock for flavor, then browned in butter to add a toasted, amber note.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavors of the other ingredients.
Butter
Fat that carries the browning of the grated cocoa-nut and adds richness.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred into the stock, giving it body.

The step that matters

Browning the grated cocoa-nut in butter. Stirring constantly keeps the coconut from scorching; once it turns amber it can quickly turn bitter, and the browned flavor depends on stopping at that point.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, beef, butter, rice, flour, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes