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Cocoa Nut Soup

A soup made with grated cocoa nut, veal stock, thickened with corn or rice flour, seasoned with salt, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and corn work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cocoa Nut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the grated cocoa nut and veal stock.

  2. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  3. Mix a little cold stock with enough corn or rice flour to thicken the soup.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

  5. Stir in the cream.

  6. Simmer for a few minutes.

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 + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Veal + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cocoa + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Cocoa + vealtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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 main flavour and body as it simmers in the stock.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Corn or rice flour
Starch that thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smoother body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Starch must be mixed into cold stock first so it disperses evenly. Added directly to hot liquid it clumps, and it needs heat to swell and thicken the soup.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, corn, cream):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, corn, 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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