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Sauce

Red Tamarind

A spicy sauce made from tamarind, mango, tomato, chillies, ginger, plums, garlic, mint, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and mango share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Red Tamarind

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind all ingredients together until well mixed.

  2. Combine the ground mixture with vinegar.

Cook

  1. Fry the mixture in butter until cooked through.

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 + mangotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Mango + plumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ginger + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Red tamarinds
Provide the sour, fruity base that gives the sauce its main tang.
Dry mangoes
Add sweetness and fruity body that balances the tamarind's sourness.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when the mixture is fried.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Dry chillies
Bring heat and pungency to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds sharp, pungent aroma that deepens as it cooks in butter.

The step that matters

Fry the mixture in butter until cooked through. Frying in butter cooks the raw ground spices and aromatics, mellowing harsh flavours and developing aroma. Stopping too early leaves the sauce raw-tasting, while overcooking can scorch the butter and make it bitter.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, mango, tomato, ginger, plum, garlic, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, mango, tomato, ginger, plum, garlic, butter. 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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