Walk through a Southeast Asian market and you’ll smell pandan before you spot it. The aroma is soft and buttery, a little grassy, faintly floral, and often described as vanilla with a tropical accent. For centuries, cooks in Thailand, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka have slipped the long emerald leaves into rice pots, custards, and syrups the way Europeans might use bay leaf or vanilla bean. Now, quietly and without much fanfare, pandan is beginning to make itself at home in dessert kitchens across India. Pastry chefs, home bakers, and experimental halwai are discovering that this humble leaf can perfume sweets with a complexity that feels both exotic and oddly familiar. Scroll down to read more.
What exactly is pandan?
Pandan, often called screwpine, is not a spice in the powdered sense, nor a flower, nor a pod. It is a leaf, narrow and blade-like, usually knotted before being simmered in milk, sugar syrup, or coconut cream. The heat releases its aromatic oils, tinting liquids pale green and lending them that signature fragrance.
The flavour profile is subtle rather than sugary: creamy without cream, sweet-leaning but herbal, with echoes of jasmine rice and warm custard. In Southeast Asia, it is used so instinctively that many cooks barely think about it; pandan goes into sticky rice, layered cakes, ice creams, steamed puddings, and chilled drinks. For Indian palates raised on cardamom, kewra, rose, saffron, and vetiver, pandan doesn’t arrive as a shock. It slips into the same aromatic register, offering perfume more than punch.
Why Indian chefs are paying attention now
The renewed interest in pandan is part of a larger shift in contemporary Indian kitchens: a move toward botanical flavours, gentle sweetness, and cross-Asian influences. Global travel, culinary television, and ingredient importers have made fresh pandan leaves and frozen extracts easier to find in metropolitan markets. In states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, already fluent in coconut milk, palm sugar, and steamed desserts, pandan feels particularly at home. Its aroma pairs naturally with jaggery syrups, rice-based batters, and milk reductions.
Some chefs infuse pandan into rasmalai milk, others steep it in sugar syrup for sponge cakes, or blend it into custard fillings for choux pastries. In fusion bakeries, pandan sponge is being layered with coconut cream and toasted sesame praline, creating desserts that look European but smell unmistakably tropical.
From leaf to liquid: How it is used
Unlike vanilla pods, which are split and scraped, pandan leaves are usually bruised, knotted, or blitzed with water to extract their flavour. The liquid is then strained and added to batters, creams, or syrups.
Fresh leaves are prized for their clean aroma, but frozen leaves and bottled extracts are increasingly common. Purists prefer the leaf, it gives fragrance without artificial sweetness or fluorescent colour but extracts offer convenience in professional kitchens. Importantly, pandan is rarely meant to dominate. It works best in the background, rounding out sharp notes, softening dairy, and giving sugar-heavy desserts a sense of calm.
The desserts it is slipping into
In Southeast Asia, pandan is famous for colouring chiffon cakes jade-green, flavouring coconut jellies, and scenting layered rice-flour puddings. In India, the adaptations are still emerging and that’s part of the excitement.
You might encounter:• Pandan-infused kheer, where the leaf steeps in milk alongside cardamom, adding a second aromatic dimension.
• Steamed rice cakes scented with pandan and coconut, echoing idli textures but leaning dessertward.
• Pandan barfi or peda, pale green and softly perfumed, especially when paired with white chocolate or khoya.
• Ice creams and kulfis, where pandan’s fragrance blooms slowly as the cold melts on the tongue.
Visually, pandan brings its own drama. Even a faint infusion lends desserts a natural pastel green, no dye required, making it especially attractive to chefs interested in botanical colour.
An old flavour with new-age appeal
What makes pandan’s arrival in Indian dessert culture particularly compelling is that it doesn’t feel like a gimmick. This is not novelty for novelty’s sake. It is an ingredient with deep culinary roots elsewhere in Asia, now being translated thoughtfully rather than transplanted wholesale.
Food historians often note that Indian cuisine has always absorbed outside influences, chillies from the Americas, potatoes via Europe, Persian techniques through royal kitchens, until they felt native. Pandan seems poised for a similar slow integration, finding its place not through viral trends but steady experimentation.
There is also something refreshingly understated about the leaf in a moment dominated by maximalist desserts. Pandan does not shout. It hums.
The scent of what’s next
If the current trickle turns into a stream, pandan could become a quiet pantry staple for Indian pastry chefs: a leaf kept in the freezer, ready to perfume milk, syrup, or cream whenever a dessert needs softness rather than spice.
It may never replace cardamom in a payasam or saffron in a festive mithai, and it doesn’t need to. Its charm lies in widening the aromatic palette, offering another shade of sweetness, another way to think about fragrance in sugar.
For now, pandan remains a discovery ingredient, passed between chefs, whispered about in bakeries, and spotted on experimental menus. But inhale once, and you understand the appeal.
Start a Conversation
Post comment