Skip to main content
Sauce

Tamarind Chutney

A sweet and sour tamarind chutney made with tamarind, salt, sugar, ginger, chillies, garlic, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tamarind and ginger work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Tamarind Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the tamarind, salt, sugar, green ginger, dried chillies, and garlic.

  2. Grind the mixture until well combined.

  3. Mix in the vinegar until smooth, ensuring no water is added.

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 + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  3. Tamarind + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Red tamarind
Provides the sour, fruity base that gives the chutney its main flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sourness and rounds out the sharp tang.
Vinegar
Adds extra acidity, keeping the sauce tangy and bright.
Dried red chillies
Supplies heat that cuts through the sweet and sour flavours.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, sugar, ginger, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, sugar, ginger, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Ginger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes