Search
Login
Let's make this more delicious! Get curated content in your inbox
By clicking "Subscribe", you agree to ourPrivacy Policy and to receive marketing emails from Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
6 Min
13/03/2026
Gudi Padwa marks the Marathi New Year, and it is one of the most important festivals in Maharashtra and the Konkan region. Two dishes appear on Maharashtrian tables without exception every year, inseparable like bread and butter: puran poli and shrikhand. So, what is their history significance, their recipes and what exaftly makes them to celebrating Gudi Padwa?
Gudi Padwa marks the start of the Marathi New Year according to the Hindu calendar and has been observed for centuries in Maharashtra, Goa, and parts of the Konkan coast. The festival holds deep cultural and religious significance, marking the beginning of the Hindu New Year for Maharashtrian Hindus, signifying renewal, prosperity, and the triumph of good over evil.
Now, the most interesting part, Gudi Padwa sees two dishes without fail every year, one of a flatbread and the other a thick, sweetened curd. This is talking about puran poli and shrikhand, both of which are sweet and tend to come in a pale yellow hue, marking spring and the sweetness of the season.
Known by different names across Southern India, from obbattu or holige in Kannada, oliga, bobbatlu or baksham in Telugu, boli in Tamil or Malayalam, to vedmi in Gujarati.
Puran poli is a sweet stuffed flatbread made with quality atta, like Aashurvaad Shudh Chakki Atta and dyed yellow with turmeric. When it comes to the name, ‘puran’ in Marathi means stuffing, and ‘poli’ means flatbread. The outer layer is made from whole wheat flour, sometimes with a small amount of maida for a softer flatbread. The filling, called puran, is made from chana dal (split Bengal gram) cooked to softness, then drained and mashed with jaggery, cardamom, and nutmeg until it forms a smooth and thick paste. The filled flatbread is rolled thin, cooked on a tawa with generous ghee until golden on both sides, and served warm.
By the 12th century, a stuffed flatbread called ‘purana’ appears in the Sanskrit encyclopedia Manasollasa, compiled by the Chalukya king Someshvara III, detailing a recipe involving wheat dough filled with sweetened lentils. This is an early ancestor of the festive sweet today.
This places puran poli's recorded history at over 900 years, though historians believe the tradition of sweet lentil-stuffed breads in Maharashtra and the western coast predates that text. The dish is not unique to Maharashtra either and exists in other states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Gujarat. But the Maharashtrian version is considered the defining form.
What makes puran poli central to Gudi Padwa is that making this sweet flatbread is a way of invoking abundance for the coming year through the ingredients. The richness of ghee, the sweetness of jaggery, and the golden colour are all symbolic of wealth.
The chana dal's role in the dish also carries symbolic weight: its longevity as an ingredient is associated with a prosperous year ahead. The seasonality should be noted as Gudi Padwa falls at the end of the Rabi harvest season, when jaggery from sugarcane and legumes from the previous crop cycle are both plentiful.
The dal and jaggery must be used in equal quantities. Too much jaggery and the filling becomes wet and sticky, which makes it impossible to roll without tearing the dough. Too little and it turns dry and crumbly. The filling must be cooked until a spoon inserted vertically into the centre stands upright without falling; this is the traditional test for readiness.
Once stuffed and rolled, the flatbread should be thin enough to see the filling through it in places, with ghee-spotted, golden patches on both sides. It is traditionally served with katachi amti, a thin, lightly spiced dal made from the reserved cooking water of the chana dal, and sometimes also with a bowl of saffron-scented warm milk.
Every flatbread needs a sidekick, and shrikhand is the asndser when it comes to Gudi Padwa festivities. It’s healthy to an extent and sweet and eaten wth great relish.
Shrikhand is a chilled dessert made from hung curd, a kind of yoghurt that has been strained through a muslin cloth for several hours until all the whey has drained out, leaving behind a thick, dense, cream-like mass called chakka in Marathi. This chakka is then whisked smooth with powdered sugar, saffron soaked in warm milk, and cardamom.
The trick to getting a good shrikhand lies in using a good quality hung curd, which decides the texture of the entire dessert. Under-strained curd produces a runny, watery result. Over-strained curd makes it too dense. Eight hours of straining, or overnight, is the standard trick.
The history of shrikhand reaches back considerably to around 500 BC, where it was common practice to dewater curd in muslin for a few hours, with sugar and spices added to yield a dish called shikharini. Which was the ancestor of shrinkahnd and quite identical to it.
An 11th-century Kannada scholar, called Chavundaraya II, gave a recipe for the same dish in his work Lokopakara. A cookbook called Soopa Shastra, published in 1508, also contains a shrikhand recipe. The dish is, by any reasonable measure, one of the oldest surviving desserts in Indian cookbooks.
Both Gujaratis and Maharashtrians claim credit for inventing it, and the dispute is unresolvable. What is not disputed is that shrikhand became a prominent feature of Maharashtrian celebratory meals during the Maratha period, when it was served at feasts and royal occasions.
Gudi Padwa falls in mid-March, when temperatures across Maharashtra inch toward summer. A cold, dairy-rich dessert is well-suited to the season, and the curd base, high in probiotics and calcium, is easy to digest after a large festive meal.
The standard version for Gudi Padwa is kesar-elaichi shrikhand, which has a golden tint from saffron, with spice notes from cardamom, and garnished with slivered pistachios and almonds. More seasonal variations, like amrakhand, arrive in the weeks immediately following the festival, once mangoes are in season.
It is worth asking directly: of all the things a Maharashtrian kitchen can produce, why have puran poli and shrikhand become the dishes most permanently associated with Gudi Padwa? It’s because both dishes use ingredients that are at their best or most available at the time the festival falls, and thus follow the rule of nature and use what is available in abundance during spring. The two dishes complement each other in a way that seems deliberate but was really put together without much thought for the result.
