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Drink

Pepper-water, Sour

A spicy, sour drink made with black pepper, red pulse, curry leaves, ghee, tamarind pulp, water, mustard, cumin, and fenugreek seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and fenugreek share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Pepper-water, Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pepper base

  1. Fry black pepper, red pulse, and curry leaves in ghee in an iron ladle.

  2. Grind the mixture into a fine paste.

Finish the water

  1. Mix in tamarind pulp and fresh water.

  2. Bring to a boil two or three times.

  3. Add mustard, cumin, and fenugreek seeds fried in ghee.

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 + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Tamarind + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

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

  3. Cumin + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + fenugreektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Tamarind + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 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

Black pepper
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the dish.
Red pulse
Adds body and thickens the base once ground into a paste.
Tamarind pulp
Supplies the sour acidity that gives the water its name.
Ghee
Carries the flavor of the spices and adds richness when frying.

The step that matters

Frying the black pepper and red pulse in ghee. Frying toasts the pepper and pulse and releases their aromatic oils. Burning them turns the base bitter, so they need steady heat and close attention.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ghee, tamarind, cumin, fenugreek):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ghee, tamarind, cumin, fenugreek. 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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