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Soup

Cocoa-nut Soup

A soup made from grated cocoa-nut, veal stock, rice flour, spices, and optional cream, butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 cocoa-nut in the stock for 1 hour, then strain.

  2. In a thick saucepan, melt the butter over low heat until just dissolved.

  3. Add the grated cocoa-nut to the butter and stir constantly until browned to an amber color.

  4. Mix the rice flour, mace, cayenne, and salt with ½ cup of cream if using, and add to the soup.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 minutes, stirring well.

  6. For a brown soup, add the cocoa-nut mixture to the gravy-soup or beef-broth and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.

  7. 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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cocoa + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup, and browns in butter for colour.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup so it has a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Carries the browning of the grated coconut and adds richness.
Veal stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the cocoa-nut in butter. Stirring constantly keeps the grated coconut from burning, while reaching an amber colour develops toasted, nutty flavour and a brown colour. Burnt pieces would make the soup bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

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