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Petha is a traditional Indian sweet candy, which has a soft texture and transparent look. It is often made from ash gourds. Around the country, you can find different varieties of this desert, like kesar, angoori, dry, chocolate, paan, and even gulab flavour.
This desert gives a perfect ending to any meal. This dish is especially popular in Agra. The Petha is not just famous in Indian but also our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
A classic Petha is prepared by chopping ash guards and cooking them in sugar syrup and then cooling to form delicious nature’s candy. In regions like Jharkhand and Bihar, the candy is called Oal and Oal ka Murabba.
The popularity of petha has been around since the days of the Mughals. It is believed that Emperor Shah Jahan asked his cooks to make a sweet as pure and as white as the Taj Mahal. The result was the Petha.
This sugar soft dessert was also served to the workers of the Taj Mahal. This story however is highly debated, some claim that it was made only for the workers to give them the energy to work through the heat and believe that Shah Jahan never even tasted it while some have different notions about the subject.
Some historians believe that the sweet dishes resembling the Petha existed even before the arrival of the Mughals. In fact, the Petha is unlike any other Mughal originated dessert like phirni or kheer which was milk-based and rich in mawa.
Today, however irrespective of its true origins, the Petha is proudly sold in hundred of places in and around Agra.
