Gur

the unrefined whole-cane sugar of the Indian village: fresh juice clarified with lady's finger mucilage, boiled down in a single open pan to the soft-ball stage, and poured out to set into blocks

Origin: India

From the journey of Sugar Cane.

Gur, from the Sanskrit guḍa, a lump, is the oldest thing made from sugar cane after the chewed stick, and it is what India was producing for a thousand years before anyone crystallised sugar out of it. The distinction is the whole point: refined sugar is sucrose with the molasses stripped away, whilst gur is the entire boiled-down juice, molasses and minerals and all, which is why it is brown rather than white, why it tastes of smoke, caramel, and faintly of the field, and why a sweet made with it cannot be reproduced with white sugar. Every cane-growing district has its own kolhu or gur bhatti, a crushing mill and a row of open pans over a fire fed with the spent cane fibre itself, and the work is done in the cool months between November and March when the cane is cut. The product is poured into shallow moulds or worked into balls and cones, and graded by colour: the paler and softer, the more prized. It is the sweetener of the village, of Ayurvedic medicine, of the harvest festivals of Pongal, Lohri, and Makar Sankranti, and of the sweets exchanged at them. A piece of gur with a glass of water is offered to a guest and eaten after a meal, and it is given to a factory or field worker as a matter of course, on the sound understanding that a person who has been sweating needs the minerals as much as the sugar.

Ingredients

5 litre fresh sugar cane juice, pressed the same day (from about 10 kg of cane)
4 whole okra (lady's fingers), split lengthways, or 2 tbsp of the traditional deola bark, for clarifying
0.5 tsp slaked lime (food-grade calcium hydroxide), dissolved in 2 tbsp water
2 tbsp neutral oil or ghee, for the moulds and to control foaming

Method

Use the juice on the day it is pressed. Strain it twice through muslin into a wide, heavy, shallow pan, leaving behind the fine fibre and grit that settles.
Bring to the boil over a strong heat. As a grey-brown scum rises, skim it off steadily and discard it. Add the split okra and the slaked lime solution, and go on skimming for the first 30 minutes.
Reduce the heat to a steady rolling boil and cook for about 1 hour 30 minutes, stirring occasionally with a long-handled paddle and scraping the base, until the volume has fallen by roughly four-fifths and the syrup turns thick, glossy, and deep amber.
Test constantly towards the end: drop a little syrup into a bowl of cold water. When it sets at once into a firm ball that holds its shape between the fingers, at about 118 to 120°C, take the pan off the heat immediately.
Stir vigorously for 2 to 3 minutes off the heat as the syrup thickens, lightens a shade, and begins to grain, then pour at once into oiled moulds, a shallow oiled tray, or shape into balls with oiled hands once cool enough to handle. Leave to set for at least an hour.

Notes

Fresh cane juice is sold by Indian, Latin American, and Southeast Asian grocers and at juice stalls, and is increasingly available frozen; it must be genuinely fresh or the gur will taste sour. This is a full-scale reduction and it takes time, so a smaller batch scales down perfectly well. Do not confuse gur with palm jaggery, which is boiled from the sap of the date, palmyra, or coconut palm and is a different product from a different plant, notwithstanding that English calls both of them jaggery. Gur is eaten in small pieces on its own after a meal, dissolved in warm water or milk, worked into tilgul and chikki at Makar Sankranti, melted into puran poli and payasam, and used in place of sugar in almost any Indian sweet, where it gives a darker colour and a far more interesting flavour.

The Gastrographer

Name: Gur
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 20
Cuisine: India
Ingredients: 5 litre fresh sugar cane juice, pressed the same day (from about 10 kg of cane); 4 whole okra (lady's fingers), split lengthways, or 2 tbsp of the traditional deola bark, for clarifying; 0.5 tsp slaked lime (food-grade calcium hydroxide), dissolved in 2 tbsp water; 2 tbsp neutral oil or ghee, for the moulds and to control foaming

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control