In Kolkata, December carries its own flavour. As families gear up to bake their treasured fruit cake, New Market becomes the epicentre of festive shopping. And amid the dry fruits, peels and spices shines a hero of Christmas baking: the unsalted white butter long known in the city as Aligarh butter.
Sold in one-kilo and half-kilo blocks wrapped in simple white paper, the Aligarh butter has been part of Kolkata’s Christmas kitchens for generations. The name comes from its original source, the dairy district of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, where local dairies churn out rich, full-fat butter ideal for ghee and baking.
Rise of Aligarh Butter
Known as Aligarh white butter, but now it comes from Bihar
Inside Hogg Market, National Dairy built its reputation on selling milk products sourced from Aligarh. For decades, its counters were stacked with blocks of freshly cut white butter that customers traced back by name and taste to the UP town.
“The white butter became popular for its quality. One kilo of white butter could produce 650ml of ghee. Not only bakeries but also families came looking for unadulterated butter for daily use,” said second-generation owner Santosh Kumar Sharma.
How Aligarh butter found a home in Kolkata
For years, the butter arrived in heavy wooden crates on trains from the north. Traders would open the crates and perform an old-school purity test. A small portion was rubbed on the back of the palm followed by a manual aroma test. Pure butter carried the warm aroma of ghee and felt dense and smooth — it was never wet or moist. This ritual unfolded every winter inside the red-brick arches of New Market before the blocks were sold to customers preparing for Christmas.
When Bihar stepped in but the Aligarh brand lived on
National Dairy remains to be a go-to shop for dairy products in New Market
“Previously, butter would come in huge wooden crates on a train. The best way to check them was to take a little bit of the butter and rub it on the back of your palm. Smell it, it will smell of pure ghee. A pure butter will not have moisture,” said Sharma.
The pandemic changed supply routes. Transport costs went up and sourcing from Aligarh became difficult. Following the Covid-19 lockdown, suppliers from Bihar began offering similar unsalted white butter at lower prices. Gradually, the original Aligarh crates ceased to arrive. Yet the name survived. Even today, shoppers still arrive asking for Aligarh-er makhon, a term rooted more in memory and tradition than in geography. What is now sold as Aligarh butter usually comes from Bihar, but the taste profile remains close enough for loyal customers to continue the ritual.
Only a few stalls keep the tradition alive
As branded companies introduced their own white butter, the demand for unbranded blocks dipped. Only two or three shops in Hogg Market still stock this butter, available in blocks or in small hundred-gram rolls. Prices range between Rs 300 and 400 per kilo depending on the season. Yet, every year, customers travel across Kolkata just to buy it for their cakes.