Malai
/məˈlaɪ/noun
A thick cream formed on the surface of boiled milk, especially in South Asian cooking.
Did you know?Malai is traditionally created by repeatedly boiling and cooling milk, allowing a rich skin to form—an everyday culinary process that resembles ancient ideas of extracting the essence from matter.
Etymological Timeline
Sanskrit period
Sanskrit
maṇḍa
“A thick extract, essence, or upper layer; often proposed as an early source connected with the South Asian vocabulary of milk solids.”
Middle Indo-Aryan period
Prakrit
maṇḍa / maḍa
“A concentrated liquid or surface layer; the exact historical pathway to malāī is uncertain.”
Medieval period
New Indo-Aryan
malāī
“Cream or the thick layer that forms on boiled milk.”
Modern period
Hindi-Urdu
मलाई / ملائی
“Malāī: milk cream, especially the rich skin collected after heating and cooling milk.”
Modern English
English
malai
“A South Asian culinary loanword for thick milk cream, used especially in descriptions of Indian and Pakistani dishes.”