Rasmalai calories: 1 piece and 100 g

Is rasmalai healthy?

Next to gulab jamun, kaju katli and jalebi, rasmalai is the one with real protein: 6 g a piece, against 2.4 g in a gulab jamun, 1 g in a kaju katli and 0.8 g in a jalebi. It comes from the chhena and the milk, and protein supplies 16 percent of its calories. Like kaju katli, it is not fried.

It is still a sweet first. A piece is 146 calories, more per piece than a gulab jamun, jalebi or kaju katli, because a piece comes with its milk. Its 11 g of added sugar is 44 percent of the World Health Organization's ideal daily figure of about 25 g. The protein does not cancel the sugar; it means rasmalai brings something besides it.

The lighter way to eat it is to take the disc and leave most of the milk. The disc alone is 48 calories with 2.6 g of protein.

If you manage blood sugar, ask your doctor or a registered dietitian how a sweet like rasmalai fits into your plan.

Where the protein comes from

Two parts of a rasmalai carry its protein. The chhena disc gives 2.6 g, about 44 percent of the total, and the milk gives 3.2 g, about 53 percent. A piece drained of its milk keeps only the disc's share, which is why the disc alone has 2.6 g.

USDA has no record for chhena, so we model it. We start from paneer, taking each nutrient as the median of four US paneer labels in FDC, and add water. Chhena is modelled as 76 g of paneer plus 24 g of water per 100 g: unpressed paneer at about 58 percent moisture. This is a stated modelling assumption, not a measured value. That gives chhena 244 calories and 17.6 g of protein per 100 g. If your chhena is pressed drier, the disc carries a little more of both.

Rasgulla starts from the same chhena, shaped into balls and cooked in syrup, but it is served in that syrup rather than in milk. We have not computed rasgulla, so this page gives no number for it. What the recipes do show is where the difference lies: rasmalai's milk adds protein as well as calories, while a syrup adds sugar alone.

A richer milk raises both sides of the ledger. Our sweet shop piece, in milk cooked down further, carries 7.6 g of protein against 6 g at home, but also 3.1 teaspoons of added sugar against 2.6 teaspoons, and it weighs 82 g to the home piece's 80 g.

A US kitchen shortcut swaps the chhena for ricotta and the reduced milk for sweetened condensed milk. Our version of it weighs 93 g and comes to 138 calories with 4.9 g of protein. It has less protein than the chhena version because whole milk ricotta has less than our modelled chhena: 7.5 g against 17.6 g per 100 g.