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EveryCow

Milk and cream

Malai

The thick skin of cream that forms on boiled milk as it cools, skimmed off daily and saved for butter, ghee and sweets.

Malai is the layer of cream that sets on top of boiled milk as it cools. In South Asian homes, where milk is boiled as soon as it arrives, the malai is lifted off each day and kept in a bowl in the refrigerator. It is eaten on bread with sugar, stirred into sweets and curries, and, once a good quantity has collected, churned to butter and cooked to ghee.

What goes in

Whole milk: 67%67%Time: 20%20%Cool storage: 13%13%3parts
  • Whole milk1067%, Boiled and cooled slowly.
  • Time320%, Several hours undisturbed.
  • Cool storage213%, Keeps the skin firm.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Boil Bring the milk to a full boil and let it simmer a minute.
  2. Step 2: Set Leave it to cool slowly without stirring.
  3. Step 3: Set Chill it so the cream firms into a thick skin.
  4. Step 4: Strain Lift the skin off with a spoon and add it to the malai bowl.
  5. Step 5: Churn Use it fresh, or churn a week's malai into butter.
  6. Whole milk: 67%67%Time: 20%20%Cool storage: 13%13%
    Finished Malai, by share.

A household habit

Collecting malai is one of the small routines of the Indian kitchen. A bowl fills over a week or two, then is set with a spoon of curd and churned, giving fresh butter for the table and ghee for the jar. Buffalo milk gives a thicker malai than cow milk. Children are often given malai with sugar on a slice of bread or roti.

In sweets and dishes

Malai gives its name to malai kofta, malai kulfi and malai chicken, and to sweets such as malai chop and malai sandwich in Bengal. Malaiyo, a winter speciality of Varanasi, is milk whipped to a light foam and left out on cold nights to catch the dew. In Lucknow a similar winter froth is called makhan malai.

Where it is used

On bread with sugarChurned to butter and gheeIn kulfi and curries

The breeds behind it

SahiwalHigh-fat zebu milk of the Punjab.GirGujarat milk breed.Red SindhiSmall dairy zebu with rich milk.TharparkarThar milk breed.

More on EveryCow

No breeds here yet. New pages are added every day.

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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