Reference point
Shell a ripe tamarind pod and smell the brown flesh inside.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Sour but warm, with a honeyed note and something almost smoky behind it. It is not bright like peel but dark and dense.
This entry shows that sour can belong to the middle stage. Tamarind’s sourness does not come from volatile oil but from organic acids and the products of ripening, so it is heavier and stays longer than any other citrus-like smell in the family.
Green and ripe tamarind are almost unrelated. Green tamarind is sharp, harsh, purely sour; ripe tamarind is round, sweet and honeyed.
How to smell it
Shell a ripe pod and smell the flesh. Then smell a piece of lime peel. Both are called sour, but they work at two different stages — that is the lesson of this entry.
Why this one is hard
Because the word sour is used for both taste and smell. You have to remind yourself that you are smelling, not tasting.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Ripe tamarind
Citrus family
Ripe tamarind has a honeyed, moist note; aged tangerine peel is dry, with a traditional-medicine note, and has lost all the brightness of fresh peel.
Scientific note
Ripe tamarind owes its sourness to tartaric acid, unlike most sour fruits, which rely on citric acid. Tartaric acid does not evaporate and so has no smell of its own — what you smell are esters formed during ripening, while the sourness comes from taste. It is one of the easiest places to confuse smell with taste.
In Vietnamese life
Tamarind trees shade many streets in Saigon, and the pods litter the pavements every season. For many people the smell of ripe tamarind is the smell of the street in summer, not of the kitchen.