Skip to main content

Kesari Bhat

"This is a traditional Indian sweet, prepared all over India. It is the standard offering to God, that is cooked as 'prasad' after a 'Pooja'. This recipe is made using 1 1/4 of any measure(instead of one) by Hindus as they believe using the extra measure will usher in prosperity and happiness."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

4 cups
Prep2 min
Cook10 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Warm the milk in a small saucepan until hot but not boiling, remove from heat, and steep the saffron threads in it for at least 5 minutes.

  2. Heat the ghee and vegetable oil together in a heavy pan over medium heat. Fry the cashew pieces until golden, then lift them out with a slotted spoon and set aside.

  3. Fry the raisins in the same fat for about 30 seconds until they puff, then remove them with the cashews.

  4. Add the semolina to the pan and stir over medium-low heat for about 4 to 5 minutes until fragrant and lightly golden.

  5. If using banana, mash it well and stir it into the semolina for 1 minute.

  6. Pour in the saffron milk slowly while stirring constantly to prevent lumps. The mixture will thicken and may spatter.

  7. Stir in the sugar and keep cooking for about 2 minutes until dissolved and glossy, then fold in the reserved cashews and raisins and serve warm.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Saffron + raisintop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Saffron + semolinatop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Banana + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the banana

The recipe marks banana as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (saffron, milk, semolina, sugar, ghee, butter, raisin):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against saffron, milk, semolina, sugar, ghee, butter, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).