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Tamarind Chutney

A spicy green chutney made from tamarind, mustard seeds, fried chillies, and optional onion or garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Tamarind Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the outer skin off the tamarind and remove the seeds.

  2. Pound the tamarind with salt using a mortar or rub it on a stone.

Make the chutney

  1. Add mustard seeds and the powdered fried chillies, then mix well.

  2. Optionally, add a small onion or a clove of garlic.

  3. Serve immediately or let it sit for better flavor.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tamarind + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Tamarind + gheetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Ghee + oniontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Green tamarind
Provides the sour base that gives the chutney its main acidity and body.
Red chillies
Add heat and pungency, and their frying in ghee deepens their flavor.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, nutty pungency when mixed into the chutney.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, mustard, ghee. 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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