🪔 The nariyal
nakru is traced back to the Chola reign,
when warriors and travellers would carry
the coconut-laden goodies as a
wholesome, sturdy food item.
🪔 These
coconut laddoos were also considered a
good luck charm.
🪔 All over
India, laddoos began life as a way to
dispense medicinal ingredients or as a
way to ensure a nutritious supply of
food while on the road.
🪔🪔🪔
THERE'S
SOMETHING ABOUT the
everyday-ness of laddoos that belies
their origins. Here it is, a perfectly
inconspicuous sweet, and yet, it had
anything but innocuous
beginnings.
The laddoo has
a rich history in India, and like a lot
of significant phenomena, starts with an
accidental discovery. It is said that a
vaid’s apprentice was mixing together
ingredients for medicines, when a few
fell into a quantity of ghee, forming
rondels. Wanting to cover up his
clumsiness, the apprentice formed
compact balls out of the medicinal
ingredients and dispensed these to the
patients.
The physician
Susruta is also recorded as having
prescribed small balls made of sesame,
jaggery, peanuts — a precursor to
today’s til laddoos — to his patients,
back in the 4th century. These were
considered to help boost their
nutritional intake, especially if they
had been undergoing treatment for some
ailments or were generally in poor
health.
While one sees
the utility of wrapping up the (to many)
unpalatable act of taking medication in
a more tempting vehicle, the laddoo had
a purpose beyond this as well.
During the
Chola reign, for instance, coconut
laddoos — or nariyal nakrus — were
packed for soldiers and travellers who
had to march long distances. These
laddoos travelled well, were not
burdensome to carry or quickly
perishable, packed in a whole lot of
nutrients within their spherical bounds,
and the sphere itself was considered a
good luck symbol.
The simplest
coconut laddoo recipes today use dry or
fresh coconut powder along with
condensed milk and dry fruits (like
raisins/cashew) to form a delicate
sweet.
Like the
Cholas, all over India, the laddoo
evolved to make use of ingredients that
were generally held to be wholesome, and
well-preserved. Dink (edible gum) and
gond ladoos, til, date and churma (whole
wheat) are some of the varieties today
that preserve the traces of this
tradition.
Incidentally,
the use of sugar in laddoos wasn’t a
thing until the British introduced the
so-called “white poison” here. However,
it soon enough came to replace natural
sweeteners like jaggery and honey in the
making of laddoos.
The laddoo
wasn’t the only spherical food that
travelled widely and well. Girmityas —
indentured labourers — from Bihar,
carried food like litti to their new
‘homes’, such as Trinidad & Tobago. Like
the laddoo, the litti too could pack in
a lot of nutrients into a small portion
of dough, which could be cooked during
rest breaks on the road, and eaten on
the go.
🪔🪔🪔
Looking
for quick and easy (or
traditional) Diwali recipes?
Visit the Slurrp website,
or download the app.
