Why it works: Tamarind and sugar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Tamarind, to Salt
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the salt mixture
Pulp the tamarind fruit.
Mix the sugar and coarse sea salt together. Pound the mixture well.
Use 1 ounce of the mixture for every pound of fruit.
Combine and pack
If the fruit is liquid, dry it over the fire.
Mix the salt mixture into the fruit.
Pack the fruit into pots and cover tightly.
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.
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Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together362 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tamarind fruit
- Provides the sour, fruity base and the bulk of the preserved mixture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the sourness of the tamarind.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the fruit against spoilage.
The step that matters
Drying the liquid fruit over the fire. If the pulp is still wet when packed, excess moisture lets it spoil. Drying it to a thicker consistency before mixing in the salt helps the preservation work as intended.
“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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