Madugula Halwa

Madugula halwa is a sweet from Madugula in Andhra Pradesh. It is made by cooking and working an extract drawn from wheat until it thickens. Dried fruit is added to the ghee-scented mixture, and the halwa is enjoyed for its soft, sticky texture.

At the local shop of Dangeti Murthy, a white liquid taken from ground wheat is combined with sugar, ghee and dried fruit and cooked slowly with continuous stirring. The wheat “milk” referred to here is not cow’s milk. It is a white liquid extracted from wheat with water.

As the mixture heats, the starch in the extract absorbs water and thickens, and the mass gradually comes together in the pot. Ghee adds the aroma of milk fat, and the dried fruit added at the end gives the soft mixture a different texture. The way wheat is used here has something in common with Tirunelveli halwa from Tamil Nadu, but the proportions and finishing vary from shop to shop.

In Madugula, some shops have passed down their method over four generations. According to the maker Dangeti Mohan, in one example the wheat is soaked for 3 days and ground, and the extract is fermented for 1 day before it is worked with ghee and sugar. Judging when to take it off the heat is a job for experienced artisans. The skill of slowly working the white wheat extract into a soft sweet has been handed down together with the town’s name.

Other sweet shops are also clustered around the Madugula bus stop, and halwa sold under this name has also appeared in nearby cities. At the Dangeti family’s shop, each order is scooped from a large container and wrapped. Mohan of the shop says that people order it for weddings and birthdays, and that in parts of North Andhra it is sometimes given as a gift to newlyweds.

Makers from the family have also run stalls at events in Hyderabad, where they have presented versions such as halwa made with jaggery and halwa with dried fruit. A visitor to another shop wrote that four kinds were on sale: sugar, jaggery, jaggery with dried fruit, and honey. This soft, slowly worked sweet has been bought as a gift by people visiting the town and has also been taken to celebrations.

Glossary