🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
💡

General knowledge · Food & drink

Indian sweets

Chhena-based sweets from the 17th century; GI registrations from 2009

Food and drink — mithai, and the geographical indications fought over in court

Collectively called mithai, the sweets of the Indian subcontinent are built from a small set of bases: khoa, milk reduced by long boiling to a solid; chhena, milk curdled with acid and drained; besan, gram flour; and sugar syrup. Persian and Central Asian influence brought the syrup-soaked fried forms, and many names are Persian in origin — barfi from barf, "snow", and gulab jamun from gulab, rosewater. Several have become matters of law: Tirupati's laddu was given a geographical indication in 2009, and West Bengal and Odisha fought a long public battle over the rasgulla, settled in 2017 and 2019 by giving each a prefixed name of its own.

How to spot them

  • ▸Khoa and chhena — reduced milk solids and drained curd — are the two milk bases
  • ▸Persian names: 'snow' for one, 'rosewater' for another
  • ▸A geographical indication awarded to a temple's offering in 2009
  • ▸Two Indian states that went to the GI registry over one syrupy ball
  • ▸Decorated with vark, edible silver leaf

Key facts

Fried milk-solid balls steeped in syrup, whose name combines the Persian for rosewater with the name of a dark purple fruit

Gulab jamun — gulab, rosewater; jamun, the java plum it resembles.

Batter squeezed in coils into hot fat, then soaked in syrup; from the Persian zulbiya

Jalebi, eaten across South and West Asia and in East Africa.

West Bengal registered its version in 2017; Odisha, claiming a temple ritual at Puri, won its own in 2019 (2017)

Rasgulla — 'Banglar Rasogolla' and 'Odisha Rasagola'. The generic name was left free for anyone.

A temple offering in Andhra Pradesh, made by the hundred thousand daily and given a geographical indication in 2009 (2009)

The Tirupati laddu, from the Venkateswara temple at Tirumala.

A gram-flour and ghee confection from a Karnataka royal kitchen, credited to a palace cook named Kakasura Madappa

Mysore pak, made for Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV.

A name taken from the Persian word for snow, cut into diamonds and often covered in silver leaf

Barfi. The silver leaf is vark, beaten to a few hundred atoms thick.

Milk boiled down for hours to a fudge-like solid, the base of a whole family of sweets

Khoa, also called mawa or khoya.

Milk curdled with lemon or vinegar and drained — the Bengali base said to owe something to Portuguese cheesemakers

Chhena, the base of rasgulla, sandesh and rasmalai.

Key ideas

  • Bengal's sweets are different in kind because they use chhena, an acid-curdled curd, whereas most of India historically used khoa. Deliberately curdling milk was long avoided as inauspicious, and the practice is often credited to Portuguese settlers in Bengal.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Mithai is the collective term; the principal bases are khoa (reduced milk), chhena (drained curd), besan (gram flour) and sugar syrup
  • •Barfi takes its name from the Persian barf, meaning snow; gulab jamun from gulab, rosewater, and jamun, the java plum
  • •Jalebi descends from the Persian zulbiya and is found from Iran to East Africa
  • •West Bengal obtained a geographical indication for 'Banglar Rasogolla' in November 2017; Odisha obtained one for 'Odisha Rasagola' in July 2019
  • •Neither state won the generic name: anyone may still sell a rasgulla
  • •Nabin Chandra Das of Bagbazar in Kolkata is credited by the Bengali tradition with the sponge rasgulla in 1868
  • •The Tirupati laddu, made at the Venkateswara temple, received a geographical indication in 2009
  • •Mysore pak was created in the kitchens of the Mysore palace, traditionally credited to the cook Kakasura Madappa
  • •Vark, the edible silver leaf used as decoration, is beaten extremely thin and is tasteless
  • •Soan papdi, kaju katli, peda, sandesh, rasmalai and halwa are among the other standard forms

Drill it — 9 cards

1 / 9new card

Sources