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Tamarind, to Preserve

A sweet and sour tamarind preserve made with sugar and lime juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Tamarind, to Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tamarind

  1. Remove the outer shell and split the tamarind lengthwise to extract the seeds.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the tamarind with sugar and lime juice to make a thick syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup well.

  3. Strain the syrup.

  4. Add the tamarind back into the syrup.

  5. Heat the mixture for a few minutes.

Preserve

  1. Transfer the mixture into well-covered jars.

  2. Allow a thick crust to form on top to preserve the tamarind.

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 + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

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

  2. Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarind
Provides the main fruit flavour, tartness and body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, helping it keep.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tamarind flavour and supports preservation.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup well. Sugar must dissolve and the syrup must reach a thick, concentrated state. Enough sugar and cooking down make the mixture hard for spoilage microbes to grow, so under-cooked syrup risks spoiling in the jars.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, sugar. 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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