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Ballachong

A spicy prawn paste made with prawns, chilies, garlic, ginger, tamarind, ghee, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Pound the cleaned prawns as fine as possible.

  2. Add the chillies, salt, garlic, ginger, tamarind juice, and ghee; mix well.

  3. If using immediately, add chopped onions, lime peel, and lime leaves.

Cook and store

  1. Heat the mixture in a frying pan with butter, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. To store, bottle the mixture without onions, covering the top with ghee.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,621 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + tamarindtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Tamarind + limetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Garlic + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,402 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

Prawns
Provide the main savoury body and protein that the paste is built around.
Dry chillies
Supply heat and colour that carry through the whole paste.
Tamarind
Adds sourness that balances the salt and richness of the ghee.
Ghee
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and helping the paste stay smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and helps brown the mixture as it heats in the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring while heating in butter. The paste is rich in fat and sugars from the aromatics, so it can scorch quickly on direct heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt, bitter spots.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, ginger, tamarind, ghee, lime, butter):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, ginger, tamarind, ghee, lime, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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