Gulab Jamuns are best described as soft delicious berry sized balls made of milk solids, flour & a leavening agent. These are soaked in rose flavored sugar syrup. One can devour them as they are, but people often prefer eating hot Gulab Jamuns with Vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate.
The Origins:
Gulab Jamun is known to originate from medieval Iran and was derived from a fritter made from refined flour (maida) dipped in sugary syrup that Central Asian Turkic invaders brought along with them to India.
The Arab dessert Luqmat al-Qazi or Luqaymaat or “The Judge’s Morsel” or “The Judge’s Bites” and they are popular all over the Middle East. Lokma as in Iran, is similar to gulab jamun, although made by using a different batter viz…all-purpose flour, dry yeast, eggs, lemon juice, salt, sugar, vegetable oil, warm water.
The word “Gulab” is derived from the Persian words ‘Gul’ (flower) and ‘āb’ (water), referring to the rose water.
“Jamun” or “jaman” is the Hindi word for Syzygium jambolanum, an Indian fruit with a similar size and shape, commonly known as black plum.Gulab Jamun is also defined as a fried delicacy in sugar syrup.
Other researchers have identified Gulab Jamun to have Indian origin too, somewhere around the medieval period but the credit basically goes to Persia for this delicious slurpy mithai.
According to the culinary historian Michael Krondl, with the invasion of Mughal emperors in India,Luqmat al-Qazi(Lokma) or gulab jamun has derived from a Persian dish made with fried dumplings with rose water syrup.
Sinful, small fried rounds that smell of warm milk and caramelised sugar, gulab jamuns are ubiquitous in India — nearly every sweet store in the country serves some version of them. In fact, they have been served and savoured so often that most of us have forgotten what it takes to make this sweet truly extraordinary.
Gulab jamun (also spelled gulaab jamun, or “Indian juice Timbits”) is a milk-solid-based sweet from the Indian subcontinent, and a type of mithai, popular in India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Maldives (where it is known as gulab ki janu), and Bangladesh (where it is known as golap jam), as well as Myanmar.
It is also common in nations with substantial populations of people with South Asian heritage, such as Mauritius, Fiji, the Malay Peninsula, Great Britain, South Africa, and the Caribbean countries of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. It is made mainly from milk solids, traditionally from khoya, whereby milk reduced to the consistency of a soft dough. Modern recipes call for dried or powdered milk instead of khoya. It is often garnished with dried nuts such as almonds and cashews to enhance flavour.
In Bangladesh, Pantua is available almost everywhere throughout the country, which can be referred to a Bengali variation of Gulab jamun. Also there are two kinds of jamuns that are famous. They are Golap Jam and Kalo Jam.Ledikeni, a variation of Pantua, is another variant of gulab jamun. It is said to have been invented by Bhim Chandra Nag on the occasion of a visit by Lady Canning, the wife of Charles Canning, the Governor-General of India during 1856–62.
Katangi, a town near Jabalpur is famous for “Jhurre Ka Rasgulla”, which has been made there for the past 100 years.It is several times the size of normal gulab jamuns and is prepared in local desi ghee.
In Rajasthan, instead of soaking gulab jamun balls in sugar syrup, they are cooked in gravy made from spices, nuts and tomato to make popular ‘Gulab Jamun ki Sabzi’.