Why it works: Tamarind and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 395 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Tamarind Tree Made Into Foogath with Shrimps
Ingredients
Directions
Rub the tender leaves or shoots through a coarse wire sieve to reduce them to a powder.
Cook the powdered leaves with shrimp, using plenty of pounded garlic.
Serve as a curry.
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.
-
Tamarind + garlictop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together395 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
-
Shrimp + garlictop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,743 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).
-
Tamarind + shrimptop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together65 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the tamarind
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, garlic):
- Avocadofits better
- Limefits about as well
- Tamarindthe original
- Lemonfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
You might also like
Green Corn Pudding64 recipes
Cornmeal mush12 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.