Braj · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Pure vegetarian, without onion or garlic in its devotional register, and built on milk and gram flour. Mathura's breakfast — a fried bedmi puri with a thin, hing-scented potato curry, a jalebi after it — is one of the most recognisable meals in northern India, and it is eaten standing up, before eight in the morning.
A puri stuffed with spiced urad dal, fried crisp, served with a thin potato curry sharp with asafoetida and dried mango. Sold from dawn; by ten the shops are switching to something else.
Where to try: The lanes around Vishram Ghat and Holi Gate in Mathura.
Khoya cooked further until it browns and takes a grainy texture, then shaped into discs and rolled in sugar. Darker and drier than the Dharwad or Kandi peda, and sold by the kilo as prasad more than as confectionery.
Where to try: The peda shops facing the Dwarkadhish temple.
Layered scrapings of milk skin, dusted with sugar and pistachio. Delicate, slightly chewy and made in small quantities every morning.
Where to try: Mathura and Vrindavan, from shops that make it fresh rather than stock it.
The fifty-six-item offering made at Annakut and other major festivals, covering every category — rice, breads, fried items, vegetables, pickles, milk sweets, drinks — in a fixed arrangement before the deity.
Gram flour in two forms — a sour yoghurt kadhi and steamed gram dumplings in gravy — cooked without onion or garlic, and the everyday backbone of the vegetarian kitchen here.
Milk reduced slowly with the skin folded back in, so it sets thick and threaded. Eaten by itself, or poured over jalebi and malpua.
A fermented flour-and-milk pancake fried in ghee and steeped in syrup — a temple offering at Janmashtami and Holi before it is a dessert.
Almond, melon seed, fennel, peppercorn and rose ground into cold milk. Made in quantity at Holi and Shivratri; the bhang version is traditional at Holi and is sold openly here.
Fried potato patties with a hing-forward masala and no onion, served with sweet and green chutneys — a chaat family that developed to be temple-compatible.
Thick sweet lassi in clay tumblers, and hand-churned white butter eaten with rock sugar as prasad. The second is the region's oldest food image and is still offered daily.
A honeycombed disc of batter fried in ghee and soaked in syrup, made for Teej and Raksha Bandhan. Shared with the Rajasthan side of the region, where it is made largest.
Rose petals layered with sugar and cured in the sun, used in paan, thandai and summer sherbet.
Staples
Sweets
Street food
Drinks
The food of Braj — signature dishes, staples, sweets, street food and where to eat them. (12)