Tradition · sweet
Gulab jamun
/ɡʊlɑːb d͡ʒɑːmʊn/
Also known as Gulāb jāmun, Gulab jaman, Lal mohan, Golap jam, Kalo jam
Gulab jamun is milk reduced to khoa, kneaded with a little flour, rolled into balls, fried and soaked in syrup scented with rose water, cardamom or saffron. Its name joins Persian gul-ab, 'rose water', to jamun, the Indian black plum it resembles. Food writers place it in the Mughal period and compare it with the Arab luqmat al-qadi, though Michael Krondl notes that the two batters are entirely different; Bengal's chhena-based pantua and ledikeni are its eastern cousins.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Material
- khoa (reduced milk), flour, ghee, sugar syrup, rose water
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
Worth knowing
Ledikeni, the Bengali variant, is named after Lady Canning, wife of the Governor-General Charles Canning; the best-known story credits the Kolkata confectioner Bhim Chandra Nag with making it in her honour during her years in India, 1856 to 1861.
The Mughal-period origin is a general attribution without a dated source. Krondl points to a rice-flour sweet resembling pantua in the twelfth-century Manasollasa, and the ledikeni story survives in several versions (her arrival, her birthday, or a post-1857 visit to Baharampur).
Connections (3)
- AnalogueBengali sweets
Bengal's version of gulab jamun is made from chhena, fresh curdled milk, rather than khoa. Pantua, deep-fried balls of semolina and chhena in syrup, ranges from pale brown to nearly black and is flavoured mainly with cardamom where gulab jamun leans on rose; ledikeni is a chhena-and-flour variant of pantua with a molten, cardamom-scented syrup. Wikipedia's articles on both describe pantua as the Bengali analogue of the Mughlai-inspired gulab jamun of north India.
- Traditional linkKolkata
A legend with several versions. The most popular says the Kolkata confectioner Bhim Chandra Nag created ledikeni, gulab jamun's Bengali cousin, for Lady Canning, wife of Governor-General Charles Canning, during her stay in India from 1856 until her death in 1861 — for her arrival in some tellings, her birthday in others. 'Lady Canning' was vernacularised into ledikeni. A rival version credits confectioners of Baharampur after 1857. The sweet is still sold in Kolkata's traditional shops.
- Traditional linkMughlai cuisine
Gulab jamun is usually placed in the Mughal kitchen. Wikipedia, following Michael Krondl, says it emerged in medieval India under the Mughals from a blend of Persianate and local cooking, and the name is half Persian, gul-ab or rose water, and half Hindustani, jamun. Krondl is cautious: the Arab luqmat al-qadi looks similar and is also soaked in rose-scented syrup, but its batter is made entirely differently, so the only Persian connection may be the syrup itself.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Gulab jamun", "Ledikeni" and "Pantua". Michael Krondl, Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert (2011). Michael Krondl et al., The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (2015). K. T. Achaya, Indian Food Tradition: A Historical Companion (1994).
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