Jigarthanda

Jigarthanda is a cold, layered milk drink from Madurai in Tamil Nadu, its name a Hindustani phrase meaning "cool heart" — a promise of relief from the fierce southern summer. It is built on chilled, lightly reduced and sweetened milk poured over a set of translucent, jelly-like almond gum called badam pisin, dosed with a dark, root-beer-scented sarsaparilla (nannari) syrup, and crowned with a scoop of ice cream, often with basil seeds or a swirl of malai cream. The result is sweet, milky and faintly medicinal-cool, with a jelly that bobs and slips through a straw. Sold from famous stalls around Madurai's Meenakshi temple, it is one of the most closely identified drinks of the city and a byword for South Indian summer cooling.