Sarbhaja

Sarbhaja (সরভাজা) is a Bengali milk sweet made by layering skins taken from the surface of boiled milk and frying them in ghee. It is known in Krishnanagar, in the Nadia district of West Bengal. In the name, sar refers to the rich skin that forms on the surface of milk, and bhaja means frying. Its distinctive feature is that the skins taken from the milk are themselves stacked to build up layers.

Layering milk skins

When milk is heated in a wide pan, a skin forms on the surface. The sar used for sarbhaja is made by lifting off this skin without tearing it. Unlike liquid cream, it is an ingredient that has already set into a thin layer, so it can be carried, cooled and stacked.

Another ingredient made from milk is kheer. Kheer here does not mean a milk porridge cooked with rice, but milk boiled down until thick. This concentrated milk is placed between thin layers of sar, and more sar is stacked on top to build a thickness that can be cut into pieces. The sweet thus combines the skin taken from the surface and the part boiled down thick in the pan, both from the same milk.

Prabir Kumar Modak, a confectioner in Krishnanagar, has described his own shop’s method of spreading a thin layer of kheer between sheets of sar and stacking three to four sheets. Since more sheets also mean higher costs for the milk skins, the thickness of the sweet also bears on the shop’s work and its price.

To collect the number of sheets needed, heating and skimming are repeated. The work of collecting the layers has also been supported by household industry outside the confectionery shops.

In the family of Baby Ghosh and Rabi Ghosh, who make sar in Krishnanagar, milk collected in the morning is boiled in a large pot and divided among about 15 to 20 small pans set over low heat. The disc-shaped skins that form are released with a thin blade and moved onto winnowing baskets lined with cloth. Because the skins tear easily, they are turned over before they stick to the cloth, and the cloth underneath is changed as they dry. In the rainy season, the family also uses the area near the stove and moving air, and places the skins differently from the dry season.

Baby learned the work of lifting the skins from her mother-in-law, and Rabi has handled milking, collecting milk in the surrounding villages, and drying. In the evening, they stack the sar, placing leaves between the soft ones, and deliver them to confectionery shops in town according to orders. Behind each square piece displayed in a shop lies the household work of making thin skins and preparing them so they can be transported.

A crisp fried surface and a soft interior

The stacks are cut into small squares and fried in ghee, a clarified milk fat. The surface browns and the edges become crisp. Inside, the softness of the stacked milk skins and kheer remains. In some methods, the pieces are briefly soaked in sugar syrup to moisten the fried surface. How much syrup they absorb also changes how the contrast between outside and inside comes through.

The related sarpuria is another Krishnanagar specialty made with sar. It is similar in combining milk skins with a milk-based dough, but what distinguishes sarbhaja is the step of frying after it has been assembled. Even though both use the same sar, the milk ingredients placed between the layers and the way they are cooked also vary from shop to shop.

Sarbhaja that has been fried and soaked in syrup. The brown surface is glossy. Photo: Sumit Surai, 2016-10-24, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the source; no further edits.

“Fried milk cream” in classical literature

In Krishnadasa Kaviraja’s Chaitanya Charitamrita, completed in the early 17th century, the name “sarabhājā” is listed alongside milk cream dishes. It is a food rendered as “fried cream” in modern English translations. The name of a food made by frying the surface of milk thus also survives in religious literature older than the opening of the Das family’s shop, discussed below.

What the classic records is the name of a food that was offered; it does not describe today’s square, layered form or its proportions.

Stories handed down at a Krishnanagar shop

Krishnanagar is a town on the Jalangi River, known for its clay craft as well as its milk sweets. Regional records name sarbhaja and sarpuria as the town’s representative sweets.

One version of the origin story tells that Surkumar Das, a confectioner in the late 19th century, made the sweet at night without letting anyone see how it was made, and sold it door to door. It is also said that his son, Adhar Chandra Das, inherited the family recipe (ingredient proportions and method) and opened a shop in 1902. Some accounts present Adhar Chandra himself as the maker, and several versions survive concerning the skills handed down through the generations of the family.

Glossary