Khoa — also spelled khoya and widely called mawa — is whole milk boiled down in an open pan for hours until almost all its water has driven off, leaving a dense, pale, faintly grainy mass of concentrated milk solids. Unsweetened and richly dairy in its own right, it is the foundational base of the Indian subcontinent's milk-based sweets: it is what gulab jamun are fried from, what barfi and peda are shaped out of, and what gives the festival mithai counter its buttery, cooked-milk soul.