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Drink

Tamarind Water

A refreshing drink made by boiling tamarinds, currants, and raisins in water, then adding lemon peel and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tamarind Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash and stone the currants and raisins.

  2. Boil the tamarinds, currants, and raisins in 3 pints of water until reduced by half.

  3. Add a bit of lemon peel and strain the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve as a sour and flavorful drink.

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

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

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

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

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tamarinds
Provide the sour, acidic flavour that defines the drink.
Currants
Add sweetness and body to the liquid as they simmer.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body to the liquid as they simmer.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced by half. Simmering concentrates the flavour and sugars of the fruit, so stopping too early leaves the drink weak and too thin, while over-reducing makes it overly strong.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tamarind, raisin, lemon. 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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