Why it works: Tamarind and orange share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Pastilles, Tamarind
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the tamarind pulp, Helfenherg sugar, jalap, starch, and oil of orange flowers together until well combined.
Roll the mixture out to a thickness of about ½ inch.
Cut into tablets weighing about 1 drachm each.
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 + orangetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together24 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Tamarind + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together362 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, sugar):
- Mangofits better
- Raisinfits better
- Limefits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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