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Drink

Pepper Water Sour

A spicy, tangy beverage made with pepper, pulse, ghee, tamarind, and lime.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,216 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pepper Water Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Heat ghee in an iron ladle.

  2. Fry black pepper, red pulse, and carapala leaves in the ghee until fragrant.

  3. Grind the mixture into a fine paste.

  4. Mix tamarind pulp and fresh water into the paste.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil two or three times.

Add the spices

  1. Add fried mustard, cumin, and fenugreek seeds.

  2. In a separate pan, fry half an ounce of pepper and red pulse in ghee.

  3. Grind the fried mixture.

  4. Mix the ground mixture with water.

Finish and season

  1. Add salt and lime juice.

  2. Boil as before.

  3. Add fried spices and carapala leaves.

  4. Add moringa fruit or apple shells for fragrance.

  5. Add a small amount of coriander to the mixture.

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. Cumin + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

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

  2. Tamarind + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Tamarind + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

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

  4. Cumin + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Black pepper
Provides the main pungent heat and sharp aroma of the sour.
Tamarind pulp
Adds the sour acidity that defines the sour.
Ghee
Carries the spices' aroma and adds richness when frying.
Red pulse
Lends body and a toasted, earthy flavour to the paste.
Mustard seeds
Release a nutty, pungent aroma when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Grinding the fried pepper and pulse mixture into a fine paste. Pepper and pulse must be fried just until fragrant, since over-browning turns them bitter. A fine grind releases their aromatic oils evenly into the liquid, so the sour tastes smooth rather than gritty.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ghee, tamarind, mustard, cumin, fenugreek, lime):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ghee, tamarind, mustard, cumin, fenugreek, 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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