Modaka

Modaka (Modak) is an old name that has long been used in India for sweet confections. The best-known form today is a filled sweet whose pleats rise from a round base and close at the top. The representative steamed modaka of Maharashtra wraps a filling of coconut and jaggery in a rice-flour skin. The outside is soft, and inside are the fine fibers of coconut and the sweetness of sugar. Beyond its pleated appearance, what characterizes this sweet is a process in which the skin is made by cooking and the filled sweet is then steamed once more.

Shaping the Rice-Flour Skin While It Is Warm

Steamed modaka is called ukadiche modak. Rice flour is added to hot water and brought together, rested briefly, and then kneaded well while still warm. Kneading rice flour that has been cooked with hot water produces a soft skin that is easy to wrap. This softened dough is then spread into a thin, cup-like shape.

The condition of the skin determines whether the pleats can be gathered neatly. If there is not enough moisture and the dough is not kneaded enough, the edges tend to crack. Conversely, if it is spread too thin, it tends to tear when the filling is added; if it is too thick, steaming takes longer and the skin becomes too prominent. A skin with the right pliability and thickness is also less likely to tear when the filling is wrapped and the edges are gathered.

The basic filling is grated coconut and jaggery. The coconut is heated with the sugar and its excess moisture is adjusted before wrapping. Some fillings are flavored with cardamom or similar spices. Folding the edge of the skin into pleats and closing them together at the top keeps the filling at the center. Depending on the recipe (the ingredient proportions and method), besides shaping by hand, there is also a method of pressing the skin against the inside of a mold, filling it, and closing the bottom.

Steamed Skins and Fried Skins

Some modaka are fried. For the Ganesha festival in Goa, fried modaka made with coconut, jaggery and cardamom are mentioned. The softness of a steamed rice-flour skin differs from the crunch of a skin fried in oil, so even sweets with the same name make a different impression in the mouth.

There are also modern products in which a dough made from reduced milk, chocolate or other ingredients is pressed into molds to give it a pointed top. These shape the milk or chocolate dough itself and have no rice-flour skin. The form of the traditional filled sweet carries over even into products made of different ingredients.

The Sweet in Ganesha’s Hand

Modaka is offered as a sweet that Ganesha loves. Ganesha is worshiped as a deity who removes obstacles and brings success and prosperity, and offerings are also made to him when beginning something new. His fondness for sweets connects the god’s approachable character with prayers for blessings. During Ganesha Chaturthi, offerings are prepared at household and community altars and shared among people. In Maharashtra, steamed modaka is the representative offering, but the kinds of offerings vary according to local food cultures.

The link between this sweet and the god can also be seen in old statues. A Ganesha statue from the Chola dynasty of South India, from around 1070, depicts him holding modaka in his hand. From the way he turns the tip of his trunk toward a small round sweet, one can see the long-standing relationship between the god and sweets. The statue shows a round sweet, which also differs in appearance from today’s form, with fine pleats gathered in a rice-flour skin.

Ganesha, c. 1070, South India, Chola dynasty, bronze. The tip of the trunk reaches toward the hand holding the sweet. Artist unknown, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1970.62, Gift of Katharine Holden Thayer. The image is a public domain work made available through the museum’s Open Access program. Unaltered. Artwork information · Terms of use.

The Sweets Named by an Old Word, and Today’s Filled Sweet

Classical modaka is not limited to today’s steamed sweet. The rituals in the ancient treatise on drama, the Natyashastra, include provisions for offering modaka to Shiva, Vishnu and other deities. There, the name refers to round sweets and does not mean only a specific pleated filled sweet. Sweet balls were also placed as food for the gods in the rites for preparing the stage.

The Manasollasa, a 12th-century work that includes encyclopedic descriptions of cooking, also mentions the name varshopalagolaka, meaning something round like hailstones. A literature survey of food culture lists it as a sweet close to modaka. As for today’s steamed modaka of Maharashtra, it is reported to have been made in households in Mumbai and Pune in the 19th century. The classical name for round sweets and today’s modaka, which combines a rice-flour skin, coconut filling and steaming, have overlapped over the course of history while differing in scope.

In South India, the Filling and the Way of Closing Change

Kozhukattai of Tamil Nadu, a close relative, also includes versions in which a sweet filling is wrapped in a rice-flour skin and steamed. In the sweet pooranam kozhukattai documented by India’s Central Rice Research Institute, roasted pulses, coconut, jaggery and cardamom are ground without adding water to make a somewhat dry filling. For the skin, boiling water is added to rice flour and the dough is kneaded, spread into a small cup and filled. It may be closed not only into a pointed shape but also into a half-moon shape. Even when the structure of wrapping, closing and steaming is shared, neither the pulses in the filling nor the outer shape is fixed to a single form.

Kozhukatta of Kerala is also a similar sweet that combines rice flour, coconut and sugar. In this region it is also known as a food that Christians make around Palm Sunday. Here, a sweet with a sweet filling wrapped in a rice-flour skin graces the table before Easter.

A Buddhist Tale and Kangidan

The name of the sweet modaka also survives in Buddhist literature. In a tale in the Fo benxing ji jing, Yashodhara makes kangigan (joy balls) and has her son Rahula deliver them to his father, Shakyamuni. In this tale, the sweet appears as an offering passed from mother to child and from child to father.

In Japanese esoteric Buddhism, there is a custom of offering kangidan to Kangiten, a deity connected to Ganesha. According to Sōrin-ji temple in Kyoto, kangidan is a sweet made by wrapping a filling, to which aromatics and fruit are added, in rice flour and frying it in sesame oil. Although it shares the structure of a rice-flour skin with a sweet inside, it differs in ingredients and aroma from the steamed sweet with coconut filling. Sweets whose names express joy are made in different lands, keeping two aspects: the pleasure of eating them and their role as offerings to deities and buddhas.

Glossary