Watalappan

Watalappan (also watalappam) is a Sri Lankan custard that combines eggs, coconut milk and jaggery and is flavored with spices. The brown custard is fragrant with cardamom and nutmeg, and some versions are topped with cashew nuts. The aroma of coconut and the flavor of brown sugar layer over the soft mouthfeel of the egg.

This sweet is especially associated with Malay and Muslim communities and appears at Eid al-Fitr, which celebrates the end of the month of fasting, at weddings and at other gatherings. Although it is a celebratory sweet of these communities, today it is enjoyed across religious and ethnic lines.

Watalappan from Sri Lanka. The brown custard cut into portions. Photo: Ji-Elle / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Original, unaltered.

Setting the sweetness of kithul sugar with egg

A kithul palm bearing clusters. Sugar is made from sap taken from the inflorescence. Photographed December 31, 2014.

Photo: Sahan.kulathunge / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Original. Reduced display-size image from the source, no additional processing.

Kithul sugar is sometimes made by pouring boiled-down sap into coconut half-shells and letting it cool and set into hemispheres.

Jaggery is a name for minimally refined sugar, and it is not limited to a single raw material. In Sri Lankan watalappan, sugar made from the sap of a palm called kithul is important. Because the brown sugar is mixed into the coconut milk, the color extends not only to caramel on the surface but throughout the whole custard.

Some households use only kithul sugar, while others combine it with white sugar. The recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method) in Recipes for Reconciliation, which grew out of an initiative of cooking across communities, uses both sugars. White sugar is melted, cardamom and cinnamon are added, and the mixture is taken off the heat and cooled before the kithul sugar, eggs and thick coconut milk are combined with it. The egg mixture is strained, then vanilla and nutmeg are added and it is steamed.

Egg is the central ingredient that sets the custard. Unlike sweets that rely mainly on flour for their springiness, the result depends on how much sugar and liquid are combined with the egg mixture and how it is heated. Besides steaming in containers, some recipes cook it in an oven in a water bath. In every case, what they have in common is that the egg mixture in a mold is set by heating it through. Some are cut from a large mold, while others are set in small individual dishes.

The spices are not fixed to a single blend

Cardamom is a recurring aroma, but the combinations of nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, vanilla and others vary. Cashew nuts are another ingredient, adding a contrasting texture to the soft custard. Each household’s combination of aromas layers onto the custard of sugar and coconut.

While the version made with coconut milk is well known, there are also examples using condensed milk. The ingredients chosen change the coconut aroma, the dairy flavor and how the sweetness comes through. Versions that add a rich dairy flavor and versions that put coconut to the fore are both made under the name watalappan.

Serikaya, and names that survive in several languages

In Sri Lanka’s Malay community, this sweet is called serikaya. It is close to the custards of the Malay world that combine eggs, coconut milk and palm sugar, and is thought to have been brought by people who came from Southeast Asia during the period of Dutch rule. Through the use of kithul sugar and spices available in Sri Lanka, it also came to take on the characteristics of a local sweet.

The name watalappan is explained by linking it to vattil, a Tamil word for a vessel, and appam, a word for a sweet. There are other theories about this etymology. It is called watalappan in Sinhala, watalappam in Tamil and serikaya among Malay people, so the same sweet has several names.

Through the Recipes for Reconciliation initiative, watalappan was also made in Jaffna in the north and Anuradhapura in the interior as a dish conveying Muslim culture. A sweet of egg and sugar served at celebrations is also made in the kitchens of other communities, and it plays a role in connecting people as well.

Glossary