Bengal's favourite sweetener: Nolen Gur

When Sukumar Ray said, “Kintu shobar chaite bhalo, pauruti aar jhola gur" (The best of all is bread with jhola gur), he wasn’t wrong because once you taste it, you will not be able to forget it. Although ‘nolen gur,’ ‘jhola gur,’ or date jaggery,  is a popular sweet concoction, little is known about the tedious process involved in producing it.

Nolen gur (image source: Pinterest)

If you are in Bengal during winter, a very familiar sight on the dining tables of almost every household is a jar of nolen gur. It is a sticky and gooey liquid jaggery extracted from the fruit sap of the date palm tree.  It acts as a sweetener that has been used in cooking since time immemorial and through the ages, has obtained the status of ‘Queen of Jaggery in Bengal.’ It not only acts as a sweetener but also has several health benefits. It is full of minerals and antioxidants, which help strengthen our immunity and can also be used as a natural detox. In addition, it helps in increasing haemoglobin levels and treating anaemia. No wonder its high vitamin content makes it a winter favourite as it helps to protect against the lowering temperatures when it becomes cold. What makes it even better is that it is entirely devoid of chemicals and preservatives. Nolen gur is a perennial winter favourite ingredient for preparing many kinds of Bengali sweet treats like roshogolla, payesh, sandesh and others because of its sweet flavour and nutty scent. It is also used as an ice cream flavour. Moreover, it can be eaten directly with chapatis and cereals or can be used for cake icing.

The date palm tree has a long history with Bengal. People have adored it for its sweet produce, whether date palm jaggery or sweet fresh toddy. From painters illustrating it to poets writing poems about the music of its rustling leaves, it has always been their favourite.

But the making of nolen gur is not an easy process.  The people who collect the sap from the date trees are known as ‘shiuli’ or ‘gachia.’ At first, the shiulis climb the prickly date palm trees at night and remove some of the leaves from a section of the top of the trunk. Once removed, the delicate inner tissue is exposed and a V-shaped incision is made. The sap is then collected through a finely designed bamboo tube through which the liquid is poured into a vessel hanging from the end of the branch.

A person climbing the date palm tree to extract its sap (image source: alamy)

You may wonder why this is done only in the winter and at night. This is because the date palm is particularly vulnerable to climate change, and even a slight increase in temperature has a negative impact on the quality of the sap. The sap starts to grow turbid and becomes unsafe for consumption the moment the weather turns humid, damp, or even rainy.  Even a little heat from the sun would cause the sap to ferment, so one has to be very careful about the temperature and timing while collecting the sap.

This process of extraction is dangerous, and technical and needs an ample amount of guidance. At the same time, due to climatic change and global warming, a date palm tree which would have yielded five litres of sap a few years ago, now only produces an average of two to three litres, making it more difficult for the shiulis to continue their profession. They receive little compensation for their labour, which has deterred the younger generation from pursuing this line of work.

In Bengali literature, the golden era of the shiulis is commemorated by the classic tale of love and betrayal "Ras" (Juice), written by Narendranath Mitra (1916–1975). The story was later adapted into the Hindi film 'Saudagar' (1973), starring Amitabh Bachchan, and it centres around an expert shiuli Motalef aka Moti, who has studied under master tapper Razek Mridha. One baul song imagines the tree as a woman and the clay pot as a man, married to each other to showcase the close bond between the date palm and the tapper.

Thus, we see that even though jaggery has been used in Indian households since time immemorial, this particular jaggery had its own separate fan base. And now that know you the story behind the making of this incredible sweetener, next time you are in Bengal, be sure to try nolen gur if you haven’t already!