Frothy winter delight: Daulat Ki Chaat's journey from street to fine dining

At 1.30am, when the city sleeps, Khemchand, 55, and his sons begin their day. As Delhi’s winter dew settles on a vessel containing 20 litres of milk mixed with 8 kilos of cream, the family takes turns to churn it with a mathani (hand-churning tool) – slow, circular movements that stretch from midnight to sunrise.

By 8am, the liquid has transformed into the airy froth that becomes Daulat ki Chaat. By 10.30am, carrying a parat (a shallow, wide vessel) brimming with the fragile delicacy, they make their way to Chandni Chowk’s bustling streets. Khemchand is at the entrance of Nayi Sadak, and his sons park their pushcarts in Gali Paranthe Wali. For Khemchand, this ritual has not changed for nearly 40 years.

Rakesh Gupta, who once followed the same process and whose family has been in the business of making Daulat Ki Chaat for 60 years, now lets the refrigerator do this labour-intensive job. Unlike Khemchand – and many others in the area – he prepares his batches inside his shop and assembles each serving fresh when a customer walks in.

Whether made with a mathani or in a modern way, Daulat Ki Chaat continues to be one of Delhi’s favourite winter delicacies, year after year.

Not a traditional Delhi delicacy

The dish is one, but the ways to make it, serve it, and even origins are many. If you always believed Daulat Ki Chaat – a perfect blend of milk froth and cream, saffron, sugar and sometimes slivers of dried fruit – was Delhi’s own winter treasure, food historian Pushpesh Pant will quickly correct you.

“It is not Delhi’s seasonal winter food at all,” Pant asserts, “The historical origins of this chaat are from Lucknow, where it was called Nimish. In Kanpur, it is Makhan Malai, and in Banaras, Malaiyo. Nimish means one-eighth of a blink of an eye. It was given this name because the froth would settle in less than a blink,” he explains.

Imagine it like this: a chaat, which melts in the mouth. Its airy lightness cannot be held on to; it collapses faster as the days get warmer and longer. This is no stodgy food to fill you up. Some vendors add bits of khoya or chenna to supplement the aerated cream, while some add the khurchan of the vessels in which they boil milk. It all depends on where you are buying it from.

What’s in a name?

Daulat Ki Chaat arrived in Delhi relatively late, most likely in the late 19th or early 20th century, and ever since, no one has quite agreed on where it actually came from. Depending on who you ask, it either travelled here with the Botai tribe from Afghanistan (who drank a fermented mare’s milk called Kumis) or floated in with Arab traders along the Silk Route.

And the name? No, there was no halwai named Daulat inventing the stuff in some Old Delhi gali. As Khemchand says, it was simply a royal indulgence once reserved for rajas and maharajas, “Pehle raeeson ka sauda tha” – hence a chaat so fancy, it practically named itself ‘wealth.’

Vendor Rakesh Gupta sells Daulat Ki Chaat only in winter – a rule he swears by. “Jis cheez ka jo mausam hai, ussi mausam mein achha lagta hai,” he says and adding that he switches to kulfi as soon as the temperature rises. Hukum Singh, a resident of UP, who has taken a room in Delhi and has learnt the craft from his maternal uncle, says in the same tone, “Jaise mausami fal hote hain jo mausam mein hi milte hain… waise hi ye bhi.”

‘Jis cheez ka jo mausam hai, ussi mausam mein achha lagta hai’

But not everyone follows this seasonal loyalty. As both Gupta and food historian Pant point out, several vendors have found shortcuts to keep the froth alive long after winter has disappeared.

“Now, in Chandni Chowk, it is made with cream of tartar, so the froth stands,” says Pant. Gupta echoes the concern: “(Kuch log) chemical daal dete hain toh mehnat nahi karni padti. Chemical se hi phool jaata hai. They manage to prepare the dish by spending just `200. Our expenditure goes up to `4,000.”

Pant frames it as part of a larger shift, “Ever since refrigeration has become possible, you can make everything round the year. Once mechanisation and commercialisation take over, things once eaten only by aristocrats become accessible to everyone downstream.”

Changing with the times

The seasonal work has helped Khemchand run his home for four decades. While his grandfather could run the business for only two months because acquiring ice was not as easy as it is now, Khemchand manages to run it for four months, “Now that ice is available, doodh ke neeche ice laga dete hain.” For the rest of the year, he sells rabdi-faluda and other chaats.

When he took over the business from his father in early 1980s, he used to sell a plate for `2, which is now being sold at `100. Hukum Singh has been selling it for `80 and `100, though this year, “Bomb (the blast at Red Fort) phatt gaya hai toh bekaar hi hai sab... Sale bahut kam hai.. Har kisi ka kaam kam hai.”

Besides the pricing, the way it is being sold has changed too. “Earlier, I used to leave from my home at 7am to sell the khomcha, now we leave at around 10-10.30am. Pehle rihaayeshi kaam tha, ab market ka kaam hai. Pehle gali-gali jaate thay, aur ghar se bade-chote sab nikal kar aa jaate thay toh do-teen gali mein hi kaam ho jaata tha,” recalls Khemchand. Now, his business depends on how the sales are for businesses in Chandni Chowk.

“Ab agar market mein kaam hai, toh hamara kaam hai. Agar vyapaar acha hai, vyapaariyon ka… wahi hai na baarish hoti hai toh chheetein sab par hi paddti hain. This blast has also impacted the sales.”

The five-star treatment of Daulat Ki Chaat

Believe it or not, the humble Daulat Ki Chaat has gone from dusty Chandni Chowk thelas to fancy plates decorated with fake currency notes. One day it’s a street-side indulgence; the next, it’s on the menu at the Ambani wedding or at a starry dinner Sonam Kapoor hosted for David Beckham.

A big part of this glow-up comes courtesy of chef Manish Mehrotra, who grew up savouring this delicate, frothy delight. In 2012, he decided it was time to bring it out of the bylanes and onto the tables of Indian Accent. A little almond sparkle here, some rose petal chikkis there – and suddenly, Daulat Ki Chaat had a whole new fan club. “The world was talking about foams and molecular food, but India had been doing it for 100 years. Nobody knew about it. At that time, I thought it was time for people from all over the world to know these things about Delhi,” says Mehrotra. He kept the name Daulat Ki Chaat on the menu, “because Delhi recognised it. For foreigners, I used fake currency notes – literally putting ‘daulat’ on the plate.”

Thanks to technology, the dish can now be enjoyed year-round. Mehrotra explains, “We managed to make it even in the summer because now we have technology. We used food siphons to make it airy.”

But does modernisation risk killing its authenticity? Mehrotra disagrees. Instead, not updating it for the current generation would lead to extinction, he says. “Small vendors are struggling to keep traditional dishes alive because the next generation doesn’t want to continue. Until awareness is there, dishes die, like Budhiya Ke Baal (not cotton candy) in Lucknow. Aise dheere dheere sab gayab ho jayengi. My biggest nightmare is someone putting mayonnaise instead of dahi on a chaat. The world should end at that point.”

And yet, here is Daulat Ki Chaat, making a comeback in the courts of modern aristocrats. Still, Mehrotra stays firm on one rule: “At heart, it should be the traditional stuff. You can play with the presentation, do whatever you want, but the essence of the dish should remain the same.”