A day to celebrate the rosogolla? Sounds good to us! Rasagola, rosogolla, rasgulla — whatever you may call it — is the spongy, syrupy dollop of deliciousness that finds a home on every sweet lover’s plate during festivities. In Odisha, the history of the rasagola is closely tied to the mythology around Lord Jagannath. So, it only makes sense that the lord’s homecoming be celebrated with the rasagola.
Rasagola Dibasa is celebrated across Odisha on Nildari Bije, the day Rath Yatra concludes. Marked as the day to remember and laud the history of the sweet, the first Rasagola Dibasa was celebrated on July 30, 2015.
Check out this sand art on Puri beach dedicated to Rasagola Dibasa.
While Rasagola Dibasa highlights the popular sweet, the Jagannath Temple's famous kitchen, or Sri Mandir, prepares a multitude of flavourful dishes such as dalma, besara and mahura. The cooking process includes only indigenous ingredients and age-old techniques. Every day, 56 varieties of prasad (also called Chhapan Bhog) are offered to Lord Jagannath, and interestingly, most of the items on the list of mahaprasad are sweets.
An age-old myth, surrounding the day, suggests that Lord Jagannath offered the rasagola to Devi Lakshmi to please her. Sarala Das’ Mahabharata, Balaram Das’ Dandi Ramayan and even Madalaa Panji, which chronicles historical events at the temple, have mentioned this sweet dish.
In 2019, Odisha got a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for its version of rasagola.
In fact, Odisha’s history with chhenna sweets is long and storied. Besides the rasagola, Odisha is home to quite a few cottage cheese-based sweets, such as the chhenna jalebi, chenna jhilli, rasabali, chhenna gajaa and most importantly, the chhenna poda, which is referred to as India’s answer to cheesecake.
If you’re planning to whip up some rasagolas at home using homemade chhenna, this recipe video could help: