Tamarind monograph.pdf - Crops for the Future

seasoning for cooked rice, meat and fish and delicious sauces for duck,
waterfowl and geese are also prepared. In Eastern African countries, the pulp
is cooked and made into a porridge called ‘ugali’ made from sorghum or
maize flour or dissolved to make a sweet drink.
Tamarind pulp is often made into a juice, infusion or brine. In Ghana, a
bitter infusion of the pods is used for cooking cereals and is often added to
the water in which poisonous yams are soaked to detoxify them. In India the
juice is used to preserve fish, which can be preserved for up to six months
when mixed with acetic acid. Tamarind is used in this way in Sri Lanka and
many other Asian countries (Macmillan 1943). The juice is also an
ingredient of Worcestershire and other barbecue sauces, commonly used in
European and North American countries (NAS, 1979).
Tamarind drink is popular in many countries around the world, though there
are many different recipes. In some African countries the pulp juice is mixed
with wood ash to neutralise the sour taste of the tartaric acid, but the
common method is to add sugar to make a pleasantly acid drink. In Ghana,
the pulp is mixed with sugar and honey to make a sweet drink. ‘Jugo’ and
‘fresco de tamarindo’ are favourite tamarind drinks in South America (FAO,
1988), and the fruit finds much use as a flavour for guava jelly. Most of the
producing countries manufacture drinks commercially. Sometimes it is
fermented into an alcoholic beverage (FAO, 1988).
In the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand, fibres are removed from the fruit
pulp, which is mixed with sugar, wrapped in paper and sold as toffees.
Sellers of these are a common sight in front of schools and on urban
roadsides. The pulp is also used to make sweet meats mixed with sugar
called ‘tamarind balls’ (Purseglove, 1987); in Senegal, they are called
‘bengal’. Similarly in India, the pulp is eaten raw and sweetened with sugar
(Lotschert and Beese, 1994). It is desirable to remove the pulp without using
water when the pulp is used in confectionery.
3.4.2 Seed
Tamarind seed is a by-product of the commercial utilisation of the fruit,
however it has several uses. In the past, the seeds have been wasted. In 1942,
two Indian scientists, T.P. Ghose and S. Krishna, announced that the
decorticated kernels contained 46-48% of a gel-forming substance. Dr G. R.
Savur of the Pectin Manufacturing Company, Bombay, patented a process
for the production of a purified product, called ‘jellose’, ‘polyose’, or
‘pectin’, which was found to be superior to other methods of fruit
preservation. The substance gelatinises with sugar concentrates even in cold
water or milk (Savur, 1948). The name ‘jellose’ has been suggested for this
polysaccharide as it describes both its jelly forming properties and the
carbohydrate character (Rao, 1948, 1956). It has been recommended for use
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