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Sauce

Red Tamarind

A spicy, tangy sauce made from tamarind, mangoes, tomatoes, chilies, 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

  1. Grind the red tamarind, dry mangoes, tomatoes (if using), dry chilies, green ginger, plums, garlic, and mint until well combined.

  2. Mix the ground ingredients with the vinegar and heat the butter in a pan, then fry the mixture until well cooked.

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 tamarind
Provides the sour, fruity base that gives the sauce its main acidity and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the mixture fries, helping carry flavour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Dry mangoes
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the sauce.
Dry chillies
Adds heat and pungency to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the mixture until well cooked. Frying drives off excess moisture and mellows the raw, sharp flavours of the ground ingredients. Undercooked mixture stays watery and tastes harsh, while cooking it through lets the flavours blend and the sauce thicken.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, mango, ginger, plum, garlic, mint, butter):

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Broccolifits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, mango, ginger, plum, garlic, mint, 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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