Bengali Sweets

Bengali sweets are built on chhena, milk curdled and drained to a soft fresh cheese, which sets them apart from the flour and reduced-milk sweets of the north. Rosogolla is the best known: small balls of chhena boiled in light sugar syrup until spongy, served swimming and eaten cold or warm. Sandesh is the drier line, chhena worked with sugar and pressed into moulds, sometimes flavoured with cardamom or scented with date palm jaggery. Mishti doi is yoghurt set with caramelised sugar in an unglazed clay pot. In winter, nolen gur, the fresh date palm sap jaggery, replaces cane sugar and changes the taste of nearly everything.

What you actually see

• Rosogolla - chhena balls boiled in light syrup, sold by the piece from trays behind glass.
• Sandesh - drier pressed chhena in moulded shapes, locally the connoisseur's choice.
• Mishti doi - yoghurt set with caramelised sugar in unglazed clay pots that you eat straight from.
• Nolen gur season - winter date palm jaggery used in place of sugar in almost every sweet on the counter.

When to go

Winter, roughly December to February, is nolen gur season and by far the best time to eat sweets here, since the flavour is not available the rest of the year. Sweets are made in the morning and are best the same day. Shops are busiest before festivals, when queues form and the popular items sell out early.

Honest expectations

Everything is very sweet, and the syrup-based sweets are heavier than they look, so two or three is a portion. Chhena sweets do not travel or keep, and buying a box to carry home usually ends badly. Counters are chaotic, with numbered tokens and no queue discipline at all. Prices are low, which makes over-ordering easy.

Nearby

College Street, the Kumartuli potters' lanes and the Hooghly ghats are all in the same part of the city.