Soan Papdi

Soan papdi (Soan Papdi) is a South Asian sugar confection that comes apart into fine threads and flakes when you pinch it with your fingers. It is best known in the form of pale yellow square blocks. Although it looks like a hard, compact sweet, the bundles of threads come apart in the mouth, and the flavor of roasted flour and fat overlays the sweetness of the sugar. Ingredients include chickpea flour called besan, wheat flour, sugar, and ghee.

Roasting the Flour, Pulling the Sugar

The fine threads of this sweet come from stretching and folding boiled-down sugar. First, the flour is roasted in fat, and the sugar is boiled down in a separate pot. While the sugar is still warm enough to stretch, it is pulled, folded, and turned while being combined with the roasted flour and fat, and this is repeated.

In the method handed down at Govindam, a sweet shop in Jaipur, two artisans work the mass of sugar from both sides, stretching it and folding it back. If it is too warm, the overlapping parts tend to stick together; if it cools too much, it sets before it becomes fine enough. Even when all the ingredients are the same, the temperature at the time of pulling and the coordination of the two artisans’ movements determine the result.

The step of roasting the flour in fat beforehand plays a different role from the step of making pulled sugar. It cooks the chickpea flour or wheat flour and adds a roasted aroma, and the flour is then spread through the sugar along with the fat. Because the flour and fat are dispersed during pulling, the fine strands of sugar form bundles, and the finished sweet comes apart into threads and flakes.

Keeping Fine Threads Inside a Square Shape

Once the mass has become fine enough, it is lightly gathered into a mold or tray and cut into pieces. Products commonly have almonds or pistachios placed on top and are flavored with cardamom. Some formulations add dairy products, but not all of them contain milk or milk powder.

The dairy cooperative Verka lists sugar, wheat flour, ghee, besan, almonds, pistachios, and cardamom as ingredients. Haldiram, on the other hand, has a product that uses palm oil. Versions with a strong milk-fat flavor and versions using vegetable fat differ in formulation, even under the same name and with the same appearance. A manufacturer in Nagpur adds liquid glucose and produces the sweet semi-automatically, so production ranges from artisans’ handwork to industrial manufacturing.

The name patisa is also associated with this family of sweets. The manufacturer Chandigarh Sweets sells soan papdi and patisa Amritsari as separate products. It describes both as square sweets made mainly of flour and sugar, with soan papdi being pale yellow and patisa golden.

Soan papdi with layered fine threads. Sliced nuts are visible on top. Photo: Thamizhpparithi Maari, 2015-05-14, location unknown. Original image／CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the source; no additional processing.

A Regional Specialty and a Diwali Gift

In Bihar, soan papdi is presented as a specialty of Buxar and Munger. This familiar sweet of sugar, chickpea flour, and ghee is a specialty of provincial towns and also a gift distributed in boxes throughout the country.

During Diwali, relatives and friends give it to one another when they meet to exchange festive greetings. Its affordable price and portability are features that local food historian Kurush F. Dalal also cites when explaining its popularity. Before the festival, posts joking about passing a box one has received on to someone else also appear online. Not only the sweet’s flavor and method but also the box itself is tied to a festive custom of passing it from person to person.

Storage calls for different care from milk sweets that contain a lot of moisture. When the fine sugar structure absorbs moisture, the light way the freshly made sweet comes apart changes. Keeping out humidity with containers and packaging helps preserve its shape and texture. The sweet is cut into squares while its threads are kept intact, and placed in packaging that keeps out moisture.

As for its origin, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and other places are mentioned, and no single definitive inventor is known. Iran’s pashmak and Turkey’s pişmaniye are also sweets that turn sugar into fine threads. What they share with soan papdi is the technique of pulling sugar, but the flours used and the final forms differ in each case. Today it is made mainly in India, and also in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Glossary