Gur - A Special Pakistani Sugar

Actually. South Asian. But you will never miss mention of gur if you know a Pakistani who is a Pakistani and not c or d. Gur is a very humble and simple desi treat. Everytime a child comes into consciousness in Pakistani society they overdose him or her with Gur. Lucky ones. We make it a wholesome sweet by adding a variety of dry fruits, and it accepts all of them and exalt them by its taste. Here is an introduction of Gur I found in The Encyclopedia of Pakistan, Oxford, 2006:

A home-made brown sugar used in South Asia. A variety made out of palm sap known as jaggery. It is produced out of sugar cane by boiling the syrup until it thickens. Gur is 65 per cent sucrose. The sugarcane is shredded and boiled in open cauldrons. When the syrup cools and solidifies, it is chopped into pieces. the losses in the home-made production of gur are 25 per cent more than in factory production. It generally takes a team of four people to prepare gur. There is no exact data on its pproduction because it is both produced and consumed within the peasant household. The estimated amount produced is 800-100,000 tons a year. In industrial areas and areas adjacent to sugar factories, over a third of farms growing sugarcane specialize in gur production. The main cantres of gur-making are Faisalabad, Sheikhupura, Sahiwal, Sargoda [city I belong to] (Punjab and Nawabshah (Sindh, province).

M. YU. MOROZOVA