Monday, February 11, 2008

In Bengal, a pancake syrup as mellifluous as maple

In an earlier post, I wrote about pancakes – how I came to love and make pancakes. I wrote about eating pancakes with honey drizzled on top. Actually, one reason I use honey is it’s less expensive than maple syrup in India but the flavor equally good.

Another syrup-like natural product I eat with pancakes is “gur.” Gur is a form of jaggery that comes from the sap of palm trees, including the date palm. Jaggery is a common term for dark, unrefined sugar that does little justice to the glorious syrup called nalen gur or taler gur in Bengal (More about that in a later post). Such gur can be in two forms: either a solid cake or a honey butter texture. It’s the liquid form that I love to drizzle upon my pancake.

In many ways, gur is similar to maple syrup: Both are processed from the sap of trees. Yet, pure maple syrup is more expensive – the cheaper varieties are mixed with other syrups, like corn syrup, to keep costs affordable for the supermarket customer.

In India, I have found a cheaper, but equally flavorful alternative. How’s that? Have you tried anything other than maple syrup on your pancakes?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah yes! We do it @ home , my daughter likes jhola gur over maple syrup on her pancakes :)
Love your writing style.
Cheers!!
Sanhita D Sensarma

Anonymous said...

Well, I have also tried kissan mixed fruit jam with pancakes at home, and it tastes quite good. And also with Hersheys chocolate syrup which is pretty delicious.
For the love of food!
Pronetri Guha

Christina said...

Hello mate nicce blog