What Is Kewra?

Kewra, also spelled keora or kewda, comes from a coastal screwpine, Pandanus odorifer. Older sources call the same plant P. odoratissimus or P. fascicularis. Only the male flowers are used: spikes of tiny flowers wrapped in tender white bracts that carry the scent. These are water-distilled, giving a very small amount of oil and a lot of scented water. That water is kewra water, the form most cooks buy.

The trade centers on Ganjam district in Odisha, on India's east coast, which has nearly 200 registered kewra distilleries.²

What it smells like

Kewra smells sweet and perfumed, like rose but fruitier.³ It is not green and it is not rice-like.

The main compound is 2-phenylethyl methyl ether, often shortened to PEME. A review of earlier Indian analyses put it at 65.6 to 75.4% of the oil, with terpinen-4-ol second.¹ PEME is on the FEMA GRAS list as a floral flavoring. The oil also contains 2-phenylethyl alcohol, a key aroma compound in rose water, which helps explain why the two smell related and are often used together.

Kewra is not pandan

Both come from the same genus, so the names get mixed up. They are different plants, different parts and different chemistry.

Swap one for the other and you get a different dish. If a brief says "pandan", see pandan flavor. If it says "kewra", it means the flower.

Where it is used

In Mughal-style cooking, kewra water is sprinkled over biryani before serving. It is sprinkled over sweets such as ras malai, rasgulla and gulab jamun just before eating.³ Kewra attar and water also flavor syrups and soft drinks.¹ Hamdard's Rooh Afza, first made in 1906, includes kewra among the flowers in its original formula.

Working with it

Natural supply is thin and variable. In one distillation, 70 kg of flowers gave 17 ml of oil, a yield of 0.024%. That oil held only 37.7% PEME, far below earlier reports. The authors put the gap down to chemotypes, meaning strains of the same plant with different chemistry.¹

Check what you are buying. The same team analyzed kewra oil from a Lucknow market. It had 16.1% PEME and 33.2% phenylethyl alcohol, and they concluded it was either synthetic or reconstituted.¹ Ask your supplier for GC data, the test that lists which compounds are in an oil and in what share.

Know your label. Kewra water distilled from the flower is a natural flavor. A kewra-type flavor built on synthetic PEME is an artificial flavor in the US.

Add it late. Cooks add kewra at the end because the aroma is volatile. In a baked, hot-filled or long-simmered product, dose after the hottest step. See heat stability.

Go light. Like most floral notes, kewra turns perfumed and soapy when overdosed. Kewra water is dilute enough to use by the teaspoon. Oils and essences are a different strength, so convert carefully. In dairy desserts it sits well with pistachio and cardamom.