The past week has been more nostalgic than it usually is. Food has that way of pulling your thoughts and bringing alive the carefree moments of time spent with siblings; the mindless chuckles of smothered laughter, fidgety fingers, feet and toes that just wouldn’t stop wiggling. This is exactly the visual that keeps playing over and over in my mind everytime I help myself to an orange mittai.
The past week has been more nostalgic than it usually is. Food has that way of pulling your thoughts and bringing alive the carefree moments of time spent with siblings; the mindless chuckles of smothered laughter, fidgety fingers, feet and toes that just wouldn’t stop wiggling. This is exactly the visual that keeps playing over and over in my mind every time I help myself to an orange mittai.
These orange segment shaped candies were a constant at Ayudha puja rituals both at home and at my parents’ offices. In fact it continues to be the preferred sweet that is offered especially during this time.
Just a few days ago, a dear friend asked me, ”what is orange mittai?” and it amazed me that someone who grew up in Coimbatore hadn’t tasted it as yet.So to rectify that, I bought some packets to promptly send her and was most inspired thereafter to go down the orange mittai memory lane.
The orange mittai’s origins come from a long line of boiled sweets which defined confectionery in a very different manner than what it is understood today. Candies made of boiled and pulled sugar and known as ‘mittai’ came flavoured with natural fruit extract. The pulippu mittai, suda mittai (mint), thaen mittai (honey) all follow the same process used to make the orange mittai but with varied taste profiles. I’m told that they were also bought frequently not just as a treat but to act as a mouth freshener and even to combat travel sickness. Remember the tray of boiled sweets that used to be served before take off on a Coimbatore-Madras Avero flight? It probably stemmed from the same school of thought.
With the emergence of soft toffees and mini chocolate bites, these simple hard candies have been somewhat sidelined. Folks belonging to my parents’ generation, even today, get all excited when offered these colorful clear sweets. The joy of rolling it around the mouth and having the citrusy sweetness slowly drip onto the taste buds is a thoroughly enjoyable sensation. One could be busy doing myriad things and still be able to find pleasure in the sweet that is safely tucked away inside a corner of the mouth. Then when the area turns numb, the tongue subconsciously rolls the piece of sweet onto the opposite side while swallowing the residual sweetness. Sometimes just to have another one, we would wait for it to get a little smaller and quickly crunch it up while feelingg the grainy bits adhere to the teeth and gums.My mother would look up on hearing the noise of teeth biting down on the hard candy and go,” you lot don’t know how to enjoy a boiled sweet!”
Making hard boiled candies is an art. Today there are sugar thermometers to figure out the soft boiled stage, hard boiled stage etc but back in the day they relied only by touch, feel and sometimes even by looking at the liquid syrup. It’s important that it stays clear because if it were allowed to caramelise then it would hamper the clarity of the candies. Lollipops too were made using boiled candies.The natural flavourings prevented it from tasting sickeningly sweet.
Today we attribute the word ‘sweet’ to a multitude of dishes featuring sugar. But actually the word ‘sweets’ was originally used to denote these hard boiled candies.
The orange mittai with it’s trademark orange and yellow colours is available at Poo market , Sangam stores, Pazhamudhir, Nilgiris and many petty shops around Coimbatore. They look so pretty that we couldn’t resist adding them to our array of Deepavali sweet gifting. The intention was to add delight by raking up childhood memories!
These are made further down south at confectionery houses in Madurai and Dindigul. It may surprise you to know that the orange mittai is exported in large quantities. In fact it’s hard to get a number of the manufacturers (believe me, I tried). An online form is available (from Madura Confectionery) which asks the customer to state the bulk requirement.
If they are indeed too busy to answer any orange mittai queries then it’s best to assume that the mittai industry is thriving. Maybe not obviously within the urban Indian set up but I wouldn’t be surprised if we indeed encountered it in a small shop tucked far away from Indian shores.
These orange segment shaped candies were a constant at Ayudha puja rituals both at home and at my parents’ offices. In fact it continues to be the preferred sweet that is offered especially during this time.
Just a few days ago, a dear friend asked me, ”what is orange mittai?” and it amazed me that someone who grew up in Coimbatore hadn’t tasted it as yet.So to rectify that, I bought some packets to promptly send her and was most inspired thereafter to go down the orange mittai memory lane.
The orange mittai’s origins come from a long line of boiled sweets which defined confectionery in a very different manner than what it is understood today. Candies made of boiled and pulled sugar and known as ‘mittai’ came flavoured with natural fruit extract. The pulippu mittai, suda mittai (mint), thaen mittai (honey) all follow the same process used to make the orange mittai but with varied taste profiles. I’m told that they were also bought frequently not just as a treat but to act as a mouth freshener and even to combat travel sickness. Remember the tray of boiled sweets that used to be served before take off on a Coimbatore-Madras Avero flight? It probably stemmed from the same school of thought.
With the emergence of soft toffees and mini chocolate bites, these simple hard candies have been somewhat sidelined. Folks belonging to my parents’ generation, even today, get all excited when offered these colorful clear sweets. The joy of rolling it around the mouth and having the citrusy sweetness slowly drip onto the taste buds is a thoroughly enjoyable sensation. One could be busy doing myriad things and still be able to find pleasure in the sweet that is safely tucked away inside a corner of the mouth. Then when the area turns numb, the tongue subconsciously rolls the piece of sweet onto the opposite side while swallowing the residual sweetness. Sometimes just to have another one, we would wait for it to get a little smaller and quickly crunch it up while feelingg the grainy bits adhere to the teeth and gums.My mother would look up on hearing the noise of teeth biting down on the hard candy and go,” you lot don’t know how to enjoy a boiled sweet!”
Making hard boiled candies is an art. Today there are sugar thermometers to figure out the soft boiled stage, hard boiled stage etc but back in the day they relied only by touch, feel and sometimes even by looking at the liquid syrup. It’s important that it stays clear because if it were allowed to caramelise then it would hamper the clarity of the candies. Lollipops too were made using boiled candies.The natural flavourings prevented it from tasting sickeningly sweet.
Today we attribute the word ‘sweet’ to a multitude of dishes featuring sugar. But actually the word ‘sweets’ was originally used to denote these hard boiled candies.
The orange mittai with it’s trademark orange and yellow colours is available at Poo market , Sangam stores, Pazhamudhir, Nilgiris and many petty shops around Coimbatore. They look so pretty that we couldn’t resist adding them to our array of Deepavali sweet gifting. The intention was to add delight by raking up childhood memories!
These are made further down south at confectionery houses in Madurai and Dindigul. It may surprise you to know that the orange mittai is exported in large quantities. In fact it’s hard to get a number of the manufacturers (believe me, I tried). An online form is available (from Madura Confectionery) which asks the customer to state the bulk requirement.
If they are indeed too busy to answer any orange mittai queries then it’s best to assume that the mittai industry is thriving. Maybe not obviously within the urban Indian set up but I wouldn’t be surprised if we indeed encountered it in a small shop tucked far away from Indian shores.