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Sour Meat

A spicy, tangy meat stew made with tamarind, mustard oil, and ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sour Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tamarind in water for 15 minutes, then squeeze and discard the solids.

  2. Mix salt, turmeric, ginger juice, onion juice, pepper, and mustard oil with the meat.

Cook the curry

  1. Heat ghee in a pan, fry the chillies and cassia leaves, then add the meat and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. Add water and cook until it nearly dries up, then stir in the tamarind solution.

  3. If desired, add browned vegetables now.

  4. Add sugar to taste about 5 minutes before serving, keeping the sauce thick.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tamarind + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tamarind + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Tamarind + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 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

Meat
Provides the main substance of the curry, and its juices and fat enrich the sauce as it cooks.
Tamarind
Supplies the sour, fruity acidity that gives the curry its main flavour.
Ghee
Adds fat for frying the spices and aromatics, carrying flavour and helping the meat brown.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the sharpness of the tamarind.
Powdered turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow colour and an earthy, warm background flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the water down until it nearly dries up, then add the tamarind. Reducing the cooking liquid concentrates the meat's flavour and thickens the sauce. Adding the tamarind only after this keeps its sourness from being diluted and lets the sauce cling to the meat.

Swap the cassia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, turmeric, ginger, onion, pepper, mustard, meat):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, turmeric, ginger, onion, pepper, mustard, meat. 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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