“Untimely rain, clouds, and fog is date palm jaggery’s enemy — the sap on those days turns foul.” — Tanmoy Bera, owner of a Kolkata date palm jaggery wholesale shop
It’s 3 a.m. in Nimpith, a tiny town in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Sixty-one-year-old Chuno Mistry heads towards a row of wild date palm trees. Mistry is a shuli, or date palm tree tapper, and he carries earthen pots slung from aIt’s about 46 degrees out and his lungi and full-sleeved shirt are hardly enough to keep him warm; goosebumps spring up along his exposed skin.
The whole neighborhood knows when the jaggery is ready from the aroma wafting in the air. It’s cause for celebration: amber-tinged, sticky, fragrant, and slightly viscous, this jaggery, with its distinctive smoky sweetness, is the most precious winter ingredient in a Bengali pantry. As a Bengali, I always look forward to Poush Parbon, a celebration held on the last day of the Bengali month of Poush to mark the Hindu astrological transition of the sun moving into makar rashi, or Capricorn. Sweets made with seasonal ingredients like gur are central to the celebration, which has its origins as a harvest festival in Bengal’s agrarian communities.
In Bengal, date palm jaggery has been around for so long that it likely “predates cane sugar in the region,” writes culinary historianConsidering that the use of granulated cane sugar in the region has been traced back to the fourth century BCE, according to the ancient Sanskrit textWild date palms grow naturally near canals, isolated ponds, farmland, and wetlands.
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