Sweet story of Indian Sweets : Mysore Pak

Mysore Pak

Mysore Pak is a delicious rich sweet from state of Karnataka, in South India. It was originated in the royal kitchen of Mysore Palace. It is made of generous amounts of ghee, sugar, gram flour, and often cardamom. The texture of the traditional 'porous' Mysore Pak is slightly hard on the outside, but just melts in our mouth.

The Mysore Pak story goes like this : There was a cook named Kakasura Madappa in Mysore Palace, during the reign of the Wodeyar dynasty. He enjoyed making dishes for Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. On one particular day, he had prepared a concoction of gram flour, ghee and sugar. This new sweet was served to the king besides other meal. The king enjoyed the sweet very much, as it just melted in his mouth. When asked its name, Madappa having had nothing in mind, simply called it the 'Mysore pak'. Pak (or paka, more precisely). In Kannada language, 'Paka' means sugar syrup and in sanskrit 'Paka' means cooking.

    The king asked the cook to open a shop outside the palace so that his subjects could taste the sweets as well. Soon the sweets' fame spread throughout the kingdom. Since then Madappa family is into the making of Mysore Pak and maintaining the legacy. Madappa started a sweet mart, Desikendra sweet stall on Asoka road in Mysore. In 1954, it was shifted to Sayyaji Road by Maddappa's grandson Basawanna. Now the shop is run by the fourth generation and getting ready to be taken over by the fifth generation. The family still lives in the same twelve bedroom house in which their ancestors lived. This house was given by the King for those who worked for him.

Hope you liked this story of Mysore Pak, a irrestible 'Royal Sweet' of Mysore.