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Dessert

Tamarind Preserve

A sweet preserve made from tamarinds, sugar, and lime juice, simmered until thick and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Tamarind Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer peel from the tamarinds and split them lengthwise to take out the seeds.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the tamarinds with sugar and boil for 10 minutes on high heat.

  2. Remove the tamarinds and continue boiling the syrup until thick.

  3. Return the tamarinds to the syrup and simmer for 15 minutes.

Jar and set

  1. Strain the syrup and pour it over the tamarinds in jars, ensuring they are well covered.

  2. Allow a thick crust to form on top of the jars to preserve the tamarinds.

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. Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarinds
Provide the tart, fruity flavor that is the base of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, when boiled to a thick syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
Limes
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration must rise high enough to preserve the fruit. Undercooked syrup stays thin and may let the tamarinds spoil in the jars.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, sugar. 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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