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EveryCow

Milk sweets

Mathura peda

Khoa roasted to a brown, grainy fudge with sugar and cardamom, the sweet of Krishna's birthplace.

Mathura peda is a round milk sweet made by roasting khoa in a pan until it browns and smells of caramel, then mixing it with sugar and cardamom. It is grainy rather than smooth and is often rolled in powdered sugar. Mathura, the town where Krishna is said to have been born, sells it in every lane near its temples.

What goes in

Khoa: 62%62%Ghee: 8%Powdered sugar: 23%23%Cardamom: 8%4parts
  • Khoa862%, Crumbled before roasting.
  • Ghee18%, Keeps it from sticking.
  • Powdered sugar323%, Mixed in and rolled over.
  • Cardamom18%, Ground fine.

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 Cook milk down to khoa in an iron pan.
  2. Step 2: Cook Roast the khoa with a little ghee, stirring until it browns and smells of caramel.
  3. Step 3: Cook Let it cool to warm and mix in sugar and cardamom.
  4. Step 4: Shape Roll into small balls, flatten slightly and roll in more sugar.
  5. Step 5: Serve Offer at the temple or box for pilgrims to take home.
  6. Khoa: 62%62%Ghee: 8%Powdered sugar: 23%23%Cardamom: 8%
    Finished Mathura peda, by share.

Sweets of Braj

The Braj region around Mathura and Vrindavan is cattle country in the stories of Krishna, the cowherd god, and its sweets are made from milk. Pilgrims take boxes of peda home as prasad. Shops roast khoa in huge iron pans, and the colour, from light tan to deep brown, depends on how long it is cooked.

Janmashtami

At Janmashtami, the festival of Krishna's birth, demand for peda in Mathura is at its highest, and the sweet is offered at midnight when the birth is celebrated. Peda of other kinds, such as the Dharwad pedha of Karnataka and the kesar peda of Gujarat, are made all over India, but the brown Mathura style is the best known in the north.

Where it is used

Temple prasadJanmashtamiPilgrim gifts

The breeds behind it

HarianaBreed of the plains around Mathura.SahiwalDairy breed kept in many gaushalas of Braj.

Also part of it, and being written: Mewati cattle (Kosi cattle of the Mathura district.).

More on EveryCow

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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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