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Soup

Soup Stocks

A coconut curry soup made with onion, butter, rice flour, curry powder, stock, coconut, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soup Stocks

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the onion in the butter.

  2. Add the rice flour, curry powder, and seasoning.

  3. Stir in the stock and then the coconut.

  4. Cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  5. Let the boil go off, then add the cream and lemon juice.

  6. Serve at once.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and helps it brown for a richer base.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Coconut
Adds fat and a mild sweet, nutty flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Let the boil go off before adding the cream and lemon juice. Boiling cream can cause it to separate and curdle, and sharp lemon juice can curdle dairy when hot. Letting the soup settle below a boil keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rice, flour, pepper, coconut, 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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