2 days ago
Gulab jamun: The sweet that travelled across empires and centuries
Luqmat-al-qadi, Lady Canning, kalo jaam — this sweet of many names is one of my all-time favourite Indian desserts. You'll find it everywhere: in Indian restaurants abroad, in people's homes, and in the tiniest of shops across India. This is the gulab jamun: deep-fried balls made of milk powder, flour, butter, and cream (or milk), soaked in sugar syrup.
One of my fondest childhood memories, from when I was six or seven, is of attending my best friend's birthday party. Alongside all the other dishes, there was always a large glass bowl of small, dark brown gulab jamuns floating in warm syrup. I marvelled each year at the fact that her mother made them from scratch. They were perfectly sweet, soft, and still slightly warm. To this day, gulab jamun remains my favourite Indian dessert.
Gulab jamun is popular in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and much of the subcontinent. In 2019, it was even declared Pakistan's national dessert. The name itself loosely translates to 'rose fruit' — gulab meaning rose, and jamun referring to the tart Java plum found across South Asia, which the sweet resembles in shape and colour. The 'rose' could also be a nod to the syrup it is soaked in, often scented with rosewater.
That rosewater is a clue to one possible origin story. While there is no definitive proof, many food historians believe gulab jamun was introduced to the subcontinent by Central Asian Turkish invaders. Others claim it was an accidental creation by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan's chef, though credible evidence for that is lacking. What I have discovered is that the dessert is quite similar to the Arabic sweet, luqmat-al-qadi, which was introduced to India by the Mughal emperors.
Luqmat-al-qadi is paler in colour and often soaked in honey rather than sugar syrup. It dates back to at least the thirteenth-century Abbasid caliphate, where it appears in cookbooks like Kitab al-Tabeekh and accounts by historians such as Abd-al-Latif al-Baghdadi. Greek poet Callimachus even mentions deep-fried honey balls — served to winners of the ancient Olympic Games — which sound strikingly similar.
The method has barely changed: balls of dough fried in oil, then dipped in flavoured syrup, whether orange juice, rosewater, honey, or lemon. Variants appear across the region — the Iranian bamiyeh, the Turkish tulumba and lokma — each with its own twist. In South Asia, Mughal cooks may have adapted these recipes with rosewater to suit the hot climate, alongside other cooling flavours like khus.
Recipes vary widely. Some use yoghurt, some baking powder, some milk powder, and a few Pakistani recipes even include an egg. Saffron and cardamom often add depth to the sweetness. Shapes vary too: round, doughnut-shaped, or oval. In Indian Food: A Historical Companion (1994), food historian K T Achaya describes them as 'balls of chenna or khoya or paneer, kneaded using maida, then deep fried till dark brown, and gently boiled in sugar syrup, sometimes flavoured with rose essence'.
Knowing the process only deepened my respect for my friend's mother. First, khoya is made by stirring milk over a low flame until it solidifies. This is mixed with flour, kneaded, shaped, and deep-fried, then dipped in sugar syrup infused with cardamom, rosewater, or saffron. The glossy deep-brown colour comes from the caramelisation of milk solids and sugar.
In Bengal, you'll find the black-hued kalo jaam — dough balls coated with sugar before frying, giving them their darker colour and firmer texture. Unlike gulab jamun, it's usually served at room temperature. Bengal is also home to the pantua, an oval variant similar to the langcha from Shaktigarh in West Bengal.
My favourite variant, however, is the ledikenni. Created for Lady Canning, wife of Governor-General Charles Canning (1856–1862), it is said that she commissioned Bhim Chandra Nag to make a sweet for her birthday. He created a hybrid of pantua and gulab jamun. Locals dubbed it ledikenni. Oblong in shape, infused with cardamom, and with a raisin at its centre, it is distinct from the pantua.
Persian, Turkish, Greek, whatever its lineage, I would strongly recommend ending a meal with gulab jamun, pantua, kalo jaam, or ledikenni. Few sweets are made of such simple ingredients yet offer so much gratification, each bite steeped not only in sugar syrup but in centuries of culinary history.
