Much Ado About Dessert
Text by Agnee Ghosh
Since 2015, West Bengal and Odisha have been locked in a fierce fight over who owns the beloved rosogolla / Photo by Marajozkee / Wikimedia Creative Commons
Rosogolla is one of those words that defies any attempt at transliteration. ‘Ros’ means juice in Bengali, and the word ‘golla’ comes close to the English word cypher or zero. But golla renders an image of a ball in the mind of a Bengali, so a rosogolla may be best described as a ‘sweet ball’ or a ‘ball of cottage cheese dipped in sugar syrup’.
In 2015, rosogolla was mired in controversy regarding its origin. The neighbouring eastern states of West Bengal and Odisha staked their claim on this sweetmeat, and a fierce battle raged from their kitchens. Odisha made the bold claim of inventing rosogollas and presented myth, legend and literature to back up its claim. This dossier contained snippets such as the legend that a missionary named Rev. Amos Sutton first referred to the delicious rosogolla in syrup as ‘rosokora’ in an English-Odia dictionary in the early- to mid-1800s. A spokesperson for the government of Odisha also mentioned the Odia historian and author Pandit Suryanarayan Dash’s award-winning book Odia Sahitya and Itihasa. The book mentions the Dandi Ramayana, a 15th century Odia poem, and describes the food associated with it, including the rosogolla. Purnachandra Bhasakosha, an early Odia dictionary, also describes a cheese-like sweetmeat soaked in jaggery syrup.
Scholars such as Asit Mohanty, an award-winning writer from Odisha, also bolstered the state’s claim to the dish. (He submitted a 150-page report that was used for the application). Mohanty says there are several allusions to rosogolla in ancient literature from the state, and that writers such as Balaram Das (1472-1550), Brajanath Badajena (1730-1800), and Abhimanyu Samantsinghar (1760-1806), all described the taste of a sweetmeat made of cottage cheese.
Bengalis argue that it was the Portuguese influence over Bengali cuisine that may have led to the birth of rosogolla, since cheese was not known in South Asia before their arrival
The Odisha government’s decision to begin the process of gaining a Geographical Indication tag for the age-old sweetmeat sparked worry among Bengalis in Kolkata. Bengalis are known for their proverbial sweet tooth. After all, the land of Bengal is famous for mishti doi (sweet curd), sandesh and other milk-based desserts and rosogolla. To support their application, they submitted an entire book called Rosogolla: Banglar Jagot Matano Aabishkaar (Rosogolla: Bengal’s invention that became a global craze) by the food historian Haripada Bhowmick.
Eager to prove their own claim to the dish, Bengali food historians pointed out that cheese was not known in South Asia before the 17th century. They claimed that it was the Portuguese influence over Bengali cuisine that may have led to the birth of the rosogolla. Fresh cottage cheese, produced by adding citric acid to boiled milk, was a favourite of the Portuguese. Renowned food scholar KT Acharya mentioned this in his writing: “"This routine technique may have lifted the Aryan taboo on deliberate milk curdling and given the traditional Bengali Moira (confectioner) a new material to work with.”
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The Odias assert that rosogolla was earlier called kheer mohona, and offered as part of the Mahaprasad at the Jagannath Temple in Puri / Saurav Maity, Wikimedia Creative Commons
The debate over the rosogolla’s provenance also has its roots in temple traditions. According to Odias, the dessert was once known by the name of kheer mohana, which was offered to Goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, at the iconic Jagannath temple in Puri. On an average, before the pandemic, more than 50,000 pilgrims visited the Jagannath temple every day. Working in the temple kitchens, the Mahasupakar Sevayatto — an army of about a thousand cooks— would cook 56 different items (called the Mahaprasad) as an offering to Lord Jagannath. According to the temple committee, this is offered to 20,000 devotees everyday and up to 100,000 guests on important occasions. Sweets made of chhena or cottage cheese have long been a part of the Mahaprasad.
There is also a Puranic tale associated with the origin of rosogolla. Goddess Laxmi is said to have been angry with Jagannath because he went on his annual Rath Yatra or chariot procession without her permission. To teach him a lesson, she is believed to have locked one of the temple gates to prevent the Jagannath’s convoy from entering the temple sanctum. Lord Jagannath is then said to have procured the sweet we know as rosogolla to appease Goddess Laxmi, and this ritual is still observed today as Niladri Bije in Odisha.
Another folk tale claims that the sweet was initially made in Pahala village, which is the abode of Odisha’s famous milkmen. It is a long-held belief that a temple priest in Odisha had taught the Pahala villagers the art of curdling excess milk. That process culminated in the delicious brown rosogollas that Pahala is famous for.
To counter these claims, Bengalis maintain that rosogolla doesn’t have any backing from ancient literature, which doesn’t mention it as one of the 56 dishes called Chappan Bhog that is served to Lord Krishna on his birthday. Besides, scholars such as Achaya have pointed out that milk was considered sacred in ancient times. It would therefore have been sacrilegious to use split milk to make any dish. Therefore, they argue, chhena or cheese could not have been a part of any ceremonial dish that was offered food to the gods.
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GI status has come to signify that a product has particular attributes, is made using traditional methods, and has a reputation that is intimately linked to its location. An application is validated once submitted to the GI register in Chennai, with the provision for interested parties to raise objections. The product’s GI is recorded once all objections have been addressed, and it provides infringement protection for the product.
Traders in the GI-specified area who make the product enjoy certain benefits, because a GI status typically belongs to the community. They are protected from traders who make misleading claims about the product’s quality or origin in locations other than those stated in the GI. Some food items which have received the GI tag in the past include Darjeeling tea, Arabica coffee from Coorg, Kashmiri saffron and Manipuri black rice, among others.
When asked whether there should be a GI tag on a food item that is beloved across these two neighbouring states, which have enjoyed centuries of cultural exchange, food historian Pritha Sen said: “The artists and the master craftsmen should get recognition for their work, and certain artisanal products of certain regions must get their due. The family that led to the origin of a food or sweet should take pride in their dynasty. To stop misappropriation, you do need certain regulations for the place of origin.”
While the origin of rosogolla is mired in mystery and controversy, the modern method used to make this sweetmeat could be credited to a Bengali gentleman from Calcutta called Nobin Chandra Das. He is believed to have boiled the chhena balls in syrup, thus making them spongier, and also giving the sweet a longer shelf life. Nobin Chandra Das’ legacy was further refined by his son and heir, Krishna Chandra Das.
KC Das was a natural innovator, and his desire to extend the shelf life of sweets led to him experimenting with vacuum-packing rosogollas in tins, which allowed them to last longer without preservatives. The first KC Das business opened its doors in 1930, and they are widely considered the pioneers of canned rosogollas. Thus, in some ways, KC Das became deeply interlinked with rosogollas both in India and overseas.
Sen is of the opinion that the recipe might have been passed down through generations and introduced by the Odia cooks who were employed in affluent Bengali households. But she argues that the sweet made in Odisha could not have been of the chhena variety.
The origin and use of chhena was part of the Bengali claim to the GI tag. The process of curdling milk to obtain chhena was taught by the Portuguese in Bengal, and that the practice of offering sweets made from curdled milk was unique to Bengal, as splitting milk was considered blasphemous in other parts of India.
The Odia rosogolla is lighter, softer and often has a brownish tinge to it / Wikimedia Creative Commons
Another argument was that since Odisha initially called its dessert kheer mohana and the name rosogolla originated in Bengal, Bengal should have the rightful claim over securing the GI tag for the sweet.
About this impasse, Chef Thomas Zacharias, former executive chef of Mumbai’s Bombay Canteen, says: “I think the fight over who invented it is futile, and it indicates an ego issue when the most important thing should be in celebrating the sweet because it is unique and deserves recognition.” Having extensively travelled across India to study its regional cuisines, he believes that there can be two GI tags on rosogollas, because the two versions are different from each other.
“Odia rosogolla has a slight brownish tinge to it, and it’s lighter and softer, while the Bengali one is pearly white and firmer in shape. I don’t prefer one over the other, but they are nowhere close to being the same thing,” he says.
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After a fierce fight that went on for two years, West Bengal finally secured the Geographical Indication tag for rosogolla on November 14, 2017.
But as Chef Zacharias pointed out, the two sweets deserve recognition on their own terms. Recognising this, in 2019, Odisha was also granted the GI tag for the ‘Odisha rosogolla’.
Asked whether West Bengal’s rosogolla overshadows the Odia version, Sen said, “Odisha never marketed it, unlike KC Das who marketed the pearly white rosogolla created by his ancestor Nobin Chandra Das. He canned it and sent it across India, and that’s how the sweet became famous. The only rosogolla people across India knew of was the one marketed and sold by K.C. Das.”
West Bengal has hundreds of sweets, but none of them was as aggressively marketed as rosogolla. That’s how this sweet became synonymous with Bengali cuisine. As states and districts compete to have their food products branded, the GI tag incorporates both regional pride in produce and neighbourly envy. But as Zacharias says, there’s also the implicit difficulty in demarcating the regionality of foods.
India’s cuisines have long benefited from constant cultural give-and-take, given the country’s centuries-old history of trade and commercial interchange with countries around the world. Because it has assimilated different ingredients, flavours and cooking methods from a range of influences, Indian cuisine is best described as a potpourri. As the fight over the ownership of rosogolla demonstrates, it is a challenge to tie foods down definitively to places, especially in the Indian context.
