Confecting Creole Bengal, from <i>Sandesh</i> to <i>Rosogolla</i> : Textural Transformations and Sonic Recall

Sandesh and rosogolla, two chhana (milk curds)-based sweets emblematic of the Bengali palate and identity, are popularly attributed to the Portuguese introduction of milk curdling into Bengal. While collective memory situates sandesh’s emergence during what we call “creole Bengal,” when different European powers operated in the Hooghly district, rosogolla was purportedly invented in 1868 in Calcutta, then capital of British India. We analyse this temporal disjunction alongside similarities and differences in texture, shape and production, to reveal the sandesh as the prototype of mofussil creolization and the rosogolla, its metropolitan end-product; furthermore, we track the translation of taste into sound within 19th century Bengali nursery rhymes and kobigaan songs. By placing these memorialization processes against the politics of class and caste involved in the production of sandesh and rosogolla, we investigate how, at specific historical conjunctures, these sweets activate memories of a Creole Bengal shaped by transoceanic exchanges and encounters.