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Soup

Cocoa-nut Soup

A savory soup made with cocoa-nut, rice flour, veal stock, and spices, finished with cream, sugar, lemon juice, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 cocoa-nut

  1. Remove the dark rind from a fresh cocoa-nut and grate it finely.

  2. Weigh the grated cocoa-nut and use 8 oz for this recipe.

Make the soup

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

  2. Strain the mixture and thicken it with 5 oz of rice flour mixed with 1 pint of cream.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of mace, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  4. Stir in 1 oz of sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

  5. Optionally, add 2/3 cup of sherry for extra flavor.

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

Grated cocoa-nut
Gives the soup its main flavor and body as it simmers into the stock.
Rice flour
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth, velvety soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened soup.
Veal stock
Forms the savory liquid base that the cocoa-nut is simmered in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the spice and lemon juice.

The step that matters

Thickening with rice flour and cream. Flour must be mixed smoothly with the cream before it meets the hot liquid, or it clumps. Starch thickens best when fully dispersed and heated, so the soup gains an even body.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cocoa, flour, rice, 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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