Tradition · sweet
Mysore Pak
Also known as Maisūru pāk, Mysore pak, Mysorepak, Mysuru paka, Monsur, Monsuri mithai
Mysore Pak is a dense, porous block of gram flour cooked in sugar syrup with a great deal of ghee, the signature sweet of Karnataka. Tradition, kept alive by a Mysuru sweet shop run by the inventor's descendants, says it was first made in the palace kitchen of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV by the cook Kakasura Madappa, who, asked its name, simply called it 'Mysore paka'. It remains part of the city's Dasara food, and in Bangladesh it is known as monsur.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Material
- gram flour (besan), sugar, ghee, cardamom
- Confidence
- Traditional / narrative attribution
Worth knowing
In the folk version, Madappa's syrup had set into a crumbly fudge by the time the maharaja finished lunch, and he served it anyway. Guru Sweet Mart on Mysuru's Sayyaji Rao Road, run by Madappa's descendants, has sold it for about eighty years.
The palace origin is family and local tradition, dated variously to the early twentieth century and the 1930s; no palace record is cited. In Bangladesh the sweet is traced instead to an Afghan confectioner, Monsur Pathan, patronised in Mughal Delhi.
Connections (3)
- PatronageKrishnaraja Wadiyar IV
Tradition makes the sweet a royal commission. Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, Maharaja of Mysore from 1902 to 1940, is said to have asked his cook Kakasura Madappa for something new; Madappa cooked gram flour, ghee, sugar and cardamom into a syrup that set before it could be served, the maharaja liked it and asked for more, and Madappa named it after the city. The story is told by local folklore and by Madappa's descendants, and The Better India places it in the 1930s.
- Associated withMysore Palace
Wikipedia says Mysore pak originated in the royal kitchens of the Kingdom of Mysore, where Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV kept an elaborate kitchen in the Mysore Palace. The name is a kitchen word: paaka is the sugar syrup cooked to a precise consistency before the roasted gram flour and hot ghee go in, and The Better India says Madappa was nicknamed nalapaka, glossed as 'he who makes the paka'. The palace origin is tradition rather than record.
- Craft tradition ofMysuru
The sweet comes in two broad kinds, the ghee-soaked fudgy block of city sweet shops and the powdery, porous blocks sold from glass jars, and Mysuru's own claim to it is a shop. Guru Sweet Mart on Sayyaji Rao Road has been run for nearly eighty years by descendants of Kakasura Madappa, the palace cook credited with inventing it, and the food prepared for the city's Dasara festivities is said to be incomplete without it.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Mysore pak" and "Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV". Sanchari Pal, "Food Secrets: The Sweet Stories Behind The Legendary Agra Petha and Mysore Pak", The Better India (2 February 2018).
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