The name gulab jamun can be broken down into two words to understand its meaning and etymology. The word gol refers to flower and ab refers to water in Persian. These two come together to mean rose-scented syrup. The word Jamun hails from the Indian black plum fruit which resembles this dessert. This brings us to the fact that the popular Indian dessert is a close cousin of the Arabic Luqmat-al-Qadi and is believed to have originated from Persia. There are tales which suggest that Shah Jahan's Persian cook brought it to the Mughals but it is still not clear. Bread gulab jamun is an interesting variation of the traditional method of making the dessert. For the unversed, gulab jamuns are brown balls dipped in sugar syrup with a soft texture and sweet taste. For this recipe, all you have to do is to make a dough with bread crumbs and milk, make balls of this dough, deep fry and dip in hot sugar syrup.
