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Drink

Tamarind Water

A chilled beverage made from tamarind pulp, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tamarind Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tamarind

  1. Shell the tamarinds, breaking the shell at the stem end and removing the contents.

  2. Brush off the woody fibers and take away the soft pulp surrounding the seeds.

Make the drink

  1. Place the pulp into a bowl and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Stir until the seeds are bare and the mixture is thick.

  3. Add sugar and strain the pulp into cold water.

  4. Serve over ice.

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. 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

Tamarinds
Provide the tart, acidic flavor that defines the drink.
Sugar
Balances the tartness of the tamarind with sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the pulp in boiling water until thick. Hot water softens the pulp so it loosens from the seeds and fibers and dissolves into the liquid. Stirring until the mixture thickens and the seeds are bare shows the pulp has released, so straining gives a smooth, fully flavored drink rather than a thin or gritty one.

“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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