Name: Tamarinds, a Summer Drink
Ingredients: fresh tamarinds; water; sugar

Why it works: Tamarind and sugar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tamarinds, a Summer Drink

Ingredients

fresh tamarinds
water
sugar

Directions

Extract the juice

Steep a few pods of fresh tamarinds in a little water for 1-2 hours.
Rub the tamarinds to extract the pulp and strain through muslin.
Pour the juice into a tumbler.

Adjust and serve

Add more water to adjust the acidity to your taste.
Sweeten with sugar to taste.

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.

Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together362 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh tamarinds: Supply the pulp, which gives the drink its tart, fruity flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the tamarind.

“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.