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Drink

Tamarind Drink

A chilled tamarind beverage made by boiling tamarinds, raisins, and water, then straining and optionally adding lemon peel, honey, or lime juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tamarind Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil tamarinds, water, and chopped raisins for about 20 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture sit for a while before straining.

  3. Transfer the liquid into an earthen vessel and serve cold.

  4. Add lemon peel and honey for added flavor.

  5. Add ½ cup of pure lime juice just before serving.

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. Lemon + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tamarind + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Tamarind + raisintop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

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

  5. Honey + limetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together679 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarinds
Provide the tart, acidic flavor base that defines the drink.
Raisins
Add natural sweetness and body to balance the tamarind's sourness.
Lime juice
Adds fresh acidity and brightness just before serving.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tamarind, raisin, honey, lime):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, raisin, honey, lime. 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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