Honey in Regional Traditions and Ceremonies

India is one of the top 10 honey-exporting countries in the world, with Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, UP, Bihar and West Bengal being major honey-producing states in the country. One of the oldest natural sweeteners in the world, honey has been a part of the Indian diet since time immemorial. So in a country with such culinary diversity, in what ways have we traditionally used it? What recipes called for honey? What other traditions did it play a part in? I had many questions on this much-revered ingredient…

My usual instinct when researching ingredients is to scour cookbooks, but I haven’t been able to find any Indian cookbooks on honey. In fact, even regional cuisine cookbooks barely mention it. Of course, a vast majority of India’s knowledge is still only found in the oral traditions passed down through generations. So I turned to some of the regional food experts I know.

Until a few decades ago, most of the honey we consumed in India was wild, harvested hives built with no human intervention. Over time, humans evolved many ways of harnessing this through various forms of beekeeping, developing symbiotic relationships with bees.

I remember when my son was little, my husband’s Nani gifted me two bottles of honey with instructions to feed him some regularly. These bottles were from Nanaji’s reserves, and I learned that Nanaji was a beekeeper, and had hives of wild bees in his home. I discovered a few years ago that Uttarakhand has a long tradition of beekeeping using hollow wall hives built into the architecture of traditional rural homes.

Similar use of wall hives can be found across Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and other northern, mountainous states. Honey has obviously been intrinsic here, drizzled on foods of all kinds from bread, to porridges to dessert. However, actual recipes that use honey to cook with are few and far between!

What about other regions of the country, I wondered. I turned to my friend Ruchi Srivastava, food researcher and veritable encyclopedia on the food of Madhya Pradesh and surrounding regions, for insights. “Honey has always been treated very preciously in Central India.” She went on to elaborate that thanks to the thick forest cover in the central belt of Nagpur, Vidarbha, and Madhya Pradesh, honey was always plentiful here. However, it is not easily available in urban areas. “In fact, growing up in Bhopal, we couldn't get honey in the city markets as we do now. We got it at weekly rural mandis, where tribals would bring honey and wild fruit for trade”. In these regions, honey-gathering has been the livelihood of forest-dwelling tribes like the Gond and Baiga, who live within the Satpura jungles of MP even today.  

This intrinsic connection between tribal communities and honey is deeply embedded across most tribal belts of India.

Towards South India, the Kodava community of Coorg, who inhabit a forested region in the Western Ghats of Karnataka has always had honey as a staple in its diet. “There were originally no borders between farm and forest. We were people of the forest,” shares Anjali Ganapathy, a Kodava home chef I reached out to. “We wouldn’t ever buy honey. Even if it wasn’t forest honey, it would be from our backyard - most homes would have a hive in their garden, where coffee, pepper and other plants grew. My grandmother had a few bee boxes, too!” Even today honey continues to be a staple feature at the Kodava table. “We have honey at breakfast or as a post-meal sweetener drizzled over ottis, puttus, dosas and more!” But it is not really used as a cooking ingredient in recipes.

Guwahati-based home chef and expert on the cuisines of North East India, Kashmiri Nath concurred on this. “Today, there is a lot of honey farming in Arunachal and Assam – but traditionally with all the forest cover, there was only wild honey. Because of its scarcity, honey was expensive, and more commonly within the purview of the wealthy. But even then, it wasn’t a part of our everyday cooking.

In fact, it is from tribal communities that I managed to find a couple of real recipes connected to honey. Albeit very simple ones. One was Keera Pori, made by some honey harvesting tribes in Kerala. In this, dried Amaranth seeds are roasted on a hot earthen pan, over a wood fire till aromatic. After being cooled on a leaf, the seeds are mixed with honey till they form a slightly thick, sticky mixture. Keera Pori is eaten as a simple sweet treat.

Speaking of a similar millet and honey sweet, nutritionist and cookbook author Supriya Arun shared references to Tamizhar Unavu - a book written by Bhaktha Satsala Bharathi in which there is a special chapter on food in the Sangam age that chronicles the Kurunji people or mountain dwellers of the Chola dynasty. “They ate tubers, malai thaen (mountain honey) and malai nel (foxtail millet as it is called in the mountains” She goes on to share that the tribes of the hills of Tamil Nadu believe even today that lord Muruga married Valli - the daughter of the hill tribe chieftain - by garlanding her with Kurunji flowers. “And so, even today, thinaiyum thenum, or foxtail millet and honey ladoos are made and served as prasad to Lord Muruga on auspicious days like shashti in the Tamil months of thai and karthigai.” She concludes her email with a famous Tamil invocation to Lord Ganesha by the great Tamil poet, Avvaiyar. 

Even today honey is an important ingredient in Prasad bhog, or ceremonial offerings across the country. Panchamrut, a crucial element in many Hindu pujas is another example. “Honey is a key element in Panchamrut,” elaborates Anagha Shirvadkar, nutritionist and culinary chronicler. This mixture of five ingredients is typically used to bathe idols of gods and goddesses in pujas. “The liquid that collects at the idol’s feet then transforms to Tirthamrit and is distributed and consumed as prasad.”

“In many parts of the country, if a kheer or halwa is made for bhog, it must contain honey,” adds Ruchi Shrivastava. If one cannot afford it, and sugar or jaggery is substituted, they will still add at least one spoon of honey, for its ceremonial value.”

And yet for all its popularity, economic, ceremonial and traditional value, all my forays into online references, cookbooks and conversations have yielded very few actual recipes. Dr Mohsina Mukadam, the eminent Indian food historian, once told me that when we research food, we look for what is there, but we also track what is not there. So here are my conclusions at this point. 

I realised that the further the source of honey, the more valued honey was. And perhaps because it was so rare, one used it with utmost care and preservation. 

Ayurveda says honey should not be heated as it loses its medicinal properties.  Perhaps this is so strongly integrated that honey is rarely subjected to heat in Indian cuisine and mostly used as a topping or added to a dish and mixed in the rare recipes available. 

The Madhulaja I shared in my last post, having evolved from being sweetened with honey to liquid jaggery today suggests that with jaggery and later sugar becoming available as cheaper, more accessible options, honey was replaced by them in recipes that used it. 

In case you have any inputs dear reader, do please leave a comment. In the meanwhile here is a recipe for Gulgule with Honey glaze.

Honey Glazed Gulgule with Orange Cream

Serves: 6 Time: 30 mins

Ingredients

For the Glaze

• ¼ cup Water
• ½ cup Saffola Honey

For the Orange Cream

• 1 cup Cream
• 2 tbsp Orange Zest 

For the Gulgule

• 2 Bananas, mashed
• 1 cup Water, hot
• 1¼ Whole wheat flour
• ½ tbsp Fennel seeds
• ¼ tsp Baking powder
• Oil for frying

Method

1. To make the glaze, combine the water and honey in a bowl. And mix well and keep aside till required.
2. To make the orange cream, combine the cream and orange zest and leave to infuse. 
3. To make the gulgule, begin warming up the oil in a khdhai. 
4. Meanwhile, make the batter. Mash the banana with hot water. 
5. In another bowl, combine the whole wheat flour and baking powder into a large bowl and add the fennel seeds.
6. Add in the mashed banana mixture and mix well with fingers or a fork to beat in air. The batter should be thick and not runny but float when you drop a bit into cold water.  
7. When the oil is hot, using a spoon, drop small amounts of the batter into the oil to form bite-sized balls. Fry each batch for 5-7 minutes or until golden brown and cooked thoroughly. 
8. Remove with the help of a perforated spoon and place them on a plate/ tray lined with oil absorbent paper. 
9. When done add the warm gulgule straight into honey glaze and toss to coat well.
10. Place the gulgule in a platter and drizzle orange cream over. You can also add some fruit and mint leaves to garnish. Serve.
    
    

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This recipe using Honey is sponsored by Saffola Honey.  All the recent news about the adulteration of honey had me worried. Especially the part about added sugar as an adulterant. Post some research and talking to experts and otherwise, I finally zeroed in on Saffola Honey for daily use because it's tested using Indian Regulatory standards for honey as well as NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) test and has been proven to be free of any adulteration and specifically has no added sugar. Stay tuned as we explore the myriad ways in which honey is used in traditional beverages in the next post. This series of recipes with Honey is sponsored by Saffola Honey."

Acknowledgements:

This blogpost was written with insights from -

• Anagha Shivardikar, nutritionist and culinary chronicler of Maharashtrian cuisine
• Anjali Ganapathy, Kodava home chef and culinary chronicler
• Kashmiri Nath, home chef and North East Indian cuisine expert
• Ruchi Shrivastava, food researcher and food show producer
• Supriya Arun, nutritionist and cookbook author 

References:

Arawwawala, Menuka & Hewageegana, Sujatha. (2017). Health Benefits and Traditional Uses of Honey: A Review. Journal of Apitherapy. 2. 9. 10.5455/ja.20170208043727.

Agarwal, Tarunika J. 2014. “BEEKEEPING INDUSTRY IN INDIA: FUTURE POTENTIAL.” IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Applied, Natural and Social Sciences Vol. 2, no. Issue 7 (Jul): 133-140.

Swetha Dasaroju*, Krishna Mohan Gottumukkala (2014)

Current Trends in the Research of Emblica officinalis (Amla):  A Pharmacological Perspective. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Review and Research 

“This Is How The Kadar Tribal Community In Tamil Nadu Extracts Wild Honey From Trees.” by Adivasi Lives Matter in Youth Ki Awaaz, Aug 12, 2020.