Three flours and prolonged stirring

SOCH Outreach Foundation documents the making of sohan halwa at Hafiz Multani Halwa in Multan’s Hussain Agahi Bazaar. Its written exhibit identifies sprouted-wheat flour, ordinary refined flour and whole-wheat flour, mixed with milk. Workers stir the mixture with a bamboo tool called a khurphi until it thickens. This is a documented workshop’s method, connecting the finished sweet with particular ingredients, tools and sustained physical work.[1]

The exhibit describes several hours of stirring, followed by sugar and the addition of ghee after the mixture comes off the heat. Toppings are arranged before it sets in metal trays. It also shows the maker’s distinctive tins as part of the product’s presentation. The sequence separates cooking, finishing, setting and packing, making the sweet’s texture and transportability part of a wider manufacturing process rather than a list of ingredients alone. The exhibit dates the family’s first shop to 1963.[1]

A confectioner remembered after Partition

Historian Ritu Bhagat’s study of Multani refugee food culture includes her own family’s sohan halwa. She identifies samnak, or wheat sprouts, milk, sugar and ghee in the traditional version she describes. In Sonepat, her family obtained it from Dhannu Halvai, another refugee from Alipur. She remembers walnuts as the dry fruit used in that preparation, illustrating a specific family and confectioner’s practice rather than every Multani version.[2]

Bhagat follows the sweet beyond the shop: it travelled to extended-family homes in Delhi, Ghaziabad and Bombay, and later to relatives in Britain and the United States. Her account places the food within relationships maintained after displacement. The named confectioner and remembered ingredients give this movement a concrete setting, while her family-based perspective preserves differences that a general label such as Punjabi sweets can obscure.[2]

An everyday gift and an institutional subject

In a 2013 first-person account, Ambreen Malik recalls Multani sohan halwa being served to guests with tea and shami kebabs during her childhood in Bahawalpur. A later visit to Multan prompted her to buy it again. This testimony records hospitality and remembered taste across two cities, linking a visitor’s purchase with a particular household’s earlier serving practice.[3]

A separate APP report describes the Punjab Food Authority and Bahauddin Zakariya University’s Department of Food Science holding a Multani Sohan Halwa exhibition. Faculty, students and food specialists participated in discussion and demonstration around preparation and quality. The event shows the sweet continuing as an institutional subject alongside workshop production and family exchange. It does not establish a single original formula or settle the competing invention legends attached to its name.[4]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. SOCH Outreach Foundation / Google Arts & Culture. Multani Sohan Halwa — Sweetmeats of Pakistan ↗institutional documentary exhibit with workshop observations · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: A look inside the making of Hafiz Sohan Halwa: flour, milk, khurphi, stirring, finishing, setting and packaging. Accessed 2026-10-31.Actual written exhibit inspected; no claim depends on the unwatched embedded film. Unproven invention legends and general halwa etymology/history are excluded.Return to Three flours and prolonged stirring, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Three flours and prolonged stirring, paragraph 2 ↑
  2. Ritu Bhagat, University of Delhi / Journal of Agricultural Engineering and Food Technology. Lost Cuisine: Food Culture of Partition Refugees from Multan ↗scholarly study incorporating first-person family history · Source date: April–June 2019 · Locator: Printed pp. 134–135, family framing and sohan-halwa paragraph naming Dhannu Halvai and extended-family destinations. Accessed 2026-10-31.Actual article passages inspected. Family recollection is attributed; broad identity equations and unsupported Persian-origin statement are not adopted.Return to A confectioner remembered after Partition, paragraph 1 ↑Return to A confectioner remembered after Partition, paragraph 2 ↑
  3. Ambreen Malik / The Express Tribune. My mother in law’s chicken haandi recipe: The perfect dish for a casual dinner ↗first-person household and travel testimony · Source date: 29 October 2013 · Locator: Opening Multan visit and Bahawalpur childhood memory, before the chicken recipe. Accessed 2026-10-31.Actual opening account inspected. Only the sohan-halwa testimony is used; the chicken recipe is outside this article’s scope.Return to An everyday gift and an institutional subject, paragraph 1 ↑
  4. Associated Press of Pakistan. PFA, BZU hold Multani Sohan Halwa exhibition ↗contemporaneous institutional-event reporting · Source date: 2026-01-30 · Locator: Report body naming organisers, participants and exhibition focus. Accessed 2026-11-04.Actual full report body inspected on successful access. It gives 30 January in the body, but the publication year was not established in the inspected text; no date or current regulatory claim is inferred. Publication date checked in the publisher’s displayed date or page metadata.Return to An everyday gift and an institutional subject, paragraph 2 ↑
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Record PH-CUL-0020 · English edition · human review not performed