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A quick curry base made with butter, tamarind paste, red currant jelly, and lime or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Our Curries

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the tamarind paste and cook for a minute.

  3. Stir in the red currant jelly until melted.

  4. Add lime or lemon juice to taste.

  5. Mix well and use as a base for your curry.

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 + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

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

  2. Red currant + limetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

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

  3. Tamarind + red curranttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

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

  4. Butter + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together495 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + tamarindtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the flavors of the other ingredients through the sauce.
Tamarind paste
Provides a sour, fruity tang that gives the sauce its characteristic acidity.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the sourness of the tamarind.
Lime or lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with extra acidity, adjusted to taste.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tamarind, lime):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tamarind, lime. 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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