Dudh Puli

Dudh puli is a Bengali pitha made by wrapping a sweet coconut filling in rice flour dough and eating it with milk. On the plate, the soft wrapped dumplings and the milk sauce are served together. “Dudh” means milk, and the name reflects the way the wrapped dough is enjoyed together with milk. It is also described as a pitha made in the season when new rice comes to market and for Poush Sankranti in winter. In one Bengali example, date palm jaggery from this season is used in both the filling and the milk.

Dudh puli coated in milk (2018, Hindu.Bengali / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0). The downscaled version from the source is used, with no changes to the content after retrieval.

Wrapping a Sweet Filling in Rice Flour Dough

In one example of Bangladeshi home cooking, grated coconut is cooked in a pan with jaggery and stirred until the moisture is gone to make the filling. Rice flour is added to salted hot water and cooked, then kneaded until smooth. The dough is divided into small portions and rolled out, the filling is wrapped inside, and the edges are sealed. These dumplings are then simmered in sweetened milk. It is a sweet with two layers: the rice flour wrapper enclosing the filling, and the sweet milk surrounding it.

In this recipe, because adding jaggery to hot milk can cause the milk to separate, the milk is first allowed to cool before the jaggery is added. The recipe also gives a method using sugar and shows an example with a wheat flour wrapper. The edges of the filled wrapper are pressed shut with the fingers, and the dumplings are simmered so that they do not fall apart in the milk. The cook Indrani Dhar learned this sweet from her mother after she married. Along with her memory of photographing the dudh puli her mother made for her during a visit, she shares a home method in which half-moon-shaped dumplings are simmered and then chilled.

Steaming First, Then Combining with Milk

Apart from the method of simmering the dumplings in milk, there is also a method in which steamed puli are placed in milk that has been sweetened and cooked down. In an example published in a Bangladeshi newspaper, rice flour and wheat flour are kneaded with coconut milk and wrapped around the filling, and the dumplings are steamed before being combined with thick milk. Within a single name, differences in the proportions of the wrapper and in how the dumplings are cooked can be seen.

The similarly shaped chandrapuli also has regional methods in which coconut is wrapped in rice flour dough. Dudh puli, by contrast, is enjoyed with the dumplings in sweet milk.

Glossary