Mysore pak, a sweet from the palace kitchen

A lunch with no dessert

The version most people in Karnataka know goes like this. In the palace at Mysuru, during the reign of Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, the king's lunch was ready but there was no dessert. The cook, Kakasura Madappa, had to think quickly. He reached for what was at hand, gram flour, ghee and sugar, cooked them together into a soft, fudge-like mixture, and sent it out to the table while it was still warm.

The king liked it enough to ask for a second helping, and then asked what it was called. Madappa, the story says, gave the first answer that came into his head: Mysore pak. Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV ruled Mysore in the first decades of the twentieth century and kept large kitchens at the Amba Vilas palace, and it is there that the sweet is said to have been born.

Like most good food legends, it comes in more than one version. Some tellings give the name to the king rather than the cook. Madappa's own family tell it differently again: in their account, the king wanted a new sweet named after his kingdom and asked Madappa to create one. Even the date drifts, with some accounts placing it more than a century ago and others in the 1930s. What every version shares is the palace kitchen, the cook and the three ingredients.

Gram flour, ghee and sugar

Few famous sweets have a shorter list of ingredients. Mysore pak is made from gram flour, also called besan, with ghee and sugar, and a little water to make the syrup. Cardamom is a common addition, and some modern versions use oil alongside the ghee.

Karnataka Tourism describes the method plainly. Sugar and water are boiled into a syrup. Gram flour is cooked in ghee until it turns lightly brown, and the two are stirred together until the mixture is ready to set, then cut into pieces. It sounds simple, and on paper it is. The skill lies in the timing, and above all in the syrup, which cooks take anywhere from a thin thread consistency to the firmer soft ball stage. That one decision does a great deal to settle whether the finished sweet is fudgy or crisp.

The syrup is also where the name comes from. Karnataka Tourism traces pak to paaka, the sugary syrup at the heart of the sweet. Madappa's great-grandson, who runs the family's sweet shop today, has linked it to nalapaka, a word for the person who makes the paaka. Read either way, the name is a small tribute to the city and to the cook's craft at the stove.

Hard, porous or soft

Buy Mysore pak from two different sweet shops and you may well come home with two different sweets. There are two broad styles: a soft, rich version that is closer to fudge, and a firmer, crumbly, porous one, usually cut into neat rectangular blocks.

The difference comes down mostly to fat and heat. As the mixture cooks, moisture from the syrup escapes as steam through the gram flour and leaves behind a lattice of tiny holes. Made with a combination of ghee and oil, the sweet sets hard and porous. Use more ghee and the extra fat fills in those holes, giving a denser, richer piece.

• Hard and porous: golden, honeycombed with fine holes, with a firm bite that crumbles as you break it.
• Soft: denser and heavier with ghee, smooth rather than honeycombed, and nearer to fudge than to biscuit.
• Either way, the test is the same. Karnataka Tourism says a good piece should melt in the mouth without having to be crushed.

From the palace to Sayyaji Rao Road

The story does not stay inside the palace walls. The king, it is said, wanted the people of Mysore to enjoy the sweet too, and asked Madappa to open a shop outside the palace grounds. More than a lifetime later, Madappa's descendants still run Guru Sweet Mart on Sayyaji Rao Road in Mysuru, which Karnataka Tourism counts among the oldest sweet shops in the city.

From there the sweet travelled far. Today Mysore pak is sold in bakeries and sweet shops across Karnataka and eaten throughout southern India, and Sayyaji Rao Road is still known for its many sweet shops. Most families have a favourite place to buy it, and a firm opinion on whether it should be hard or soft.

A sweet for festivals and weddings

Mysore pak may have started at a king's table, but it belongs to everyone now. Across southern India it is eaten at weddings, at festivals and at all kinds of family celebrations. It is the sort of sweet that marks good news: a box opened when relatives arrive, a piece pressed into a guest's hand, a plate set out on a festival morning.

Part of its charm is that it asks for so little and gives back so much. There is no filling, no decoration and nothing to hide behind, only three ingredients and a cook paying close attention. Perhaps that is why a sweet first made for a king has settled so comfortably into ordinary homes.

Gram flour, ghee, sugar and a steady hand at the stove: it was never a complicated sweet, only a patient one.

If you are curious about the festive meals that so often surround sweets like this one, read our piece on eating on a banana leaf. And if, like us, you think a small square of something sweet is best followed by a strong cup of coffee, our guide to filter coffee the South Indian way is waiting.

Sweets like Mysore pak are part of the food culture that inspires Annara: generous, rooted in Karnataka and made to be shared. Our menu is still being written, and we will share it when it is ready.