Divided by Borders, United by Flour: A Delicious Journey Through Global Kitchens

The Thekua Connection: How One Sweet Unites the World

My mom makes thekua with the precision of a scientist and the devotion of a priest. Wheat flour, jaggery, ghee, and a hint of fennel. She kneads the dough until it’s soft but firm, shapes each piece with her thumbs, and slides them into shimmering hot oil. Within minutes, the kitchen smells like childhood, celebration, and something ineffably sacred.

Last year, I showed her a photo of a Danish pastry called klejner. She squinted at my phone and said, “That’s just thekua with a different shape.”

She wasn’t wrong. And that single comment sent me on a journey across continents — from Bihar to Copenhagen, Cairo to Seoul, Mexico City to Kyoto — tracing the surprising ways in which one humble idea has united humanity across time and geography.

Turns out, the world has been making thekua all along.
We’ve just been calling it by different names.

The Thekua Formula: A Global Love Story

Let’s break it down.

Thekua’s essence is simple yet genius:

• Wheat or grain flour for structure
• Jaggery or sugar for sweetness and preservation
• Ghee or oil for richness
• A touch of spice — fennel, cardamom, maybe nutmeg
• Hot oil to turn it all golden, crispy, and divine

It’s festive. It’s shareable. It keeps for days without spoiling. It’s both offering and indulgence.

Now, hold that thought — and travel with me. Because across borders, people have been creating the same magic, guided by the same instinct: turn simple ingredients into joy.

Middle East & North Africa: Where Sugar Meets Syrup

Walk through Cairo during Ramadan, and you’ll find vendors frying zalabiya — crispy golden dough balls drenched in rose-scented syrup. The base? Wheat flour, sugar, and oil. The method? Mix, shape, fry, sweeten. Sound familiar? Thekua, just wearing perfume.

Travel west to Tunisia and Algeria, and you’ll meet makroudh. These diamond-shaped sweets use semolina instead of wheat flour, filled with dates, then fried and dipped in syrup. Same concept, different accent.

In Morocco, grandmothers bake ghriba — crumbly, melt-in-mouth cookies made with flour, sugar, and ghee. No deep frying, but the same trio of flour, fat, and love.

Across the Middle East, every household has a version of this story — sweet dough, heat, and devotion. Whether soaked in syrup or made dry, these sweets serve the same purpose: to mark holy days, to gather families, to sweeten gratitude.

East & Southeast Asia: The Crispy Chronicles

If you visit Japan, try karintō. You’ll swear it’s thekua’s cousin. Deep-fried sticks of wheat dough coated in brown sugar, crunchy outside, chewy inside — they’ve been making them since the Edo period.

Cross over to Korea, and you’ll find kkwabaegi, beautiful twisted dough rings dusted with cinnamon sugar. Watch someone fry them, and it’s thekua déjà vu — flour, oil, sugar, repetition, rhythm.

In Malaysia, kuih bahulu makes an appearance during Eid and weddings — tiny golden cakes with crisp edges and soft centres. The ingredients? Flour, sugar, eggs, oil — the same sacred quartet that powers sweets across continents.

Each of these — whether a street snack or ceremonial treat — embodies the same truth: we all crave sweetness wrapped in effort and memory.

Europe: The Old World’s Sweet Secrets

You don’t need to look far in Europe to find echoes of thekua.

In Spain, it’s churros: ridged strips of dough fried until crisp, sprinkled with sugar, and served with molten chocolate. It’s the breakfast of joy, born from the same simple logic — fry dough, share happiness.

In Denmark, there’s klejner, the pastry that made my mom smile in recognition. Twisted, diamond-shaped, and dusted with sugar, it’s fried during Christmas and filled with nostalgia. Some recipes even include cardamom, the same spice that perfumes our Chhath Puja kitchens.

In Italy, you’ll find taralli dolci — ring-shaped cookies glazed with sugar or honey, baked or fried. Different shape, same spirit.

Across Europe, festivals smell the same: oil sizzling, sugar melting, laughter rising. Different songs, same rhythm.

Latin America: Where Continents Collide

Sail west, and you’ll find buñuelos waiting.

In Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador, these golden fritters appear during Christmas and New Year celebrations. Some are thin and crispy, others puffy and light — all made with flour, sugar, and oil, often soaked in syrup or dusted with cinnamon sugar.

In Chile, sopaipillas take centre stage — round, fried pastries made with flour and pumpkin, served with sweet syrup. Warm, comforting, eaten in winter — a cousin of thekua, adapted to the Andes.

Latin America’s sweets carry traces of Spanish and indigenous traditions, just as thekua carries the blend of Vedic ritual and regional adaptation.

Wherever you go, you’ll find that festivals taste the same — golden, fried, sweet, and shared.

The Pattern Behind the Pastry

At some point, you stop seeing coincidence and start seeing a connection.

Everywhere on earth, people independently arrived at the same idea — that flour, fat, sugar, and heat can turn ordinary ingredients into sacred joy.

Why? Because it works.

• Wheat flour is abundant and versatile.
• Sugar or jaggery adds sweetness and shelf life.
• Ghee or oil brings richness and texture.
• Deep-frying locks in freshness, creating a treat that lasts.

In ancient times, when people had no refrigerators but infinite festivals, fried sweets became the perfect solution: portable, durable, celebratory.

Our ancestors, without speaking the same language, solved the same problem — how to make something that honours gods, nourishes families, and endures time.

They didn’t share recipes — they shared instincts.

Borders Are Political, Kitchens Are Universal

Political borders are new. Recipes are ancient.

Wheat has been cultivated for 10,000 years. Humans have been frying food for millennia. Sugarcane spread from New Guinea to India to Africa to the Americas. By the time humans drew lines on maps, they were already united by their kitchens.

That’s the real magic of thekua.

While nations argued, grandmothers across the world were kneading the same dough, heating the same oil, and smiling at the same sound — that soft crackle when flour meets fire.

They weren’t in contact. They didn’t collaborate. And yet, somehow, they were part of the same sacred global tradition: turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The Festival Factor

Here’s another shared thread — these sweets are almost always tied to festivals.

• Thekua for Chhath Puja
• Zalabiya for Ramadan
• Klejner for Christmas
• Buñuelos for the New Year
• Makroudh for Eid
• Churros for village fairs and holidays

We make them when time feels sacred. When we want to thank the divine, feed the community, and preserve moments in memory.

When a mother teaches her child to make thekua, she isn’t just passing a recipe — she’s teaching patience, devotion, and belonging. And that’s true whether she’s in Patna or Paris.

Food is how humanity prays together, even when separated by oceans.

What Our Grandmothers Already Knew

My mom was right — klejner is thekua with a different shape.

But she was also beautifully wrong — because Klejner carries Danish Christmas nostalgia the way thekua carries Chhath memories by the river. The shape changes; the soul doesn’t.

Every grandmother who fries something golden and sweet is part of an unspoken sisterhood. They may debate ingredients and techniques — sugar vs. jaggery, ghee vs. oil, round vs. twisted — but they all agree on one universal rule:
Make it with love. Share it freely. Pass it on.

This is why these recipes endure — they’re not just instructions, they’re inheritances.

The Recipe for Understanding

In a world obsessed with differences, thekua offers a gentle reminder: we’re more similar than we think.

Every culture has its version of fried sweetness. Every family has its version of love shaped by hand. Every festival, no matter the faith, uses food to express gratitude and joy.

When you bite into a thekua — or a churro, or a buñuelo — you’re connecting to thousands of years of human history. You’re part of a story older than borders, older than nations — a story told in flour, oil, and sweetness.

So yes, we’re divided by borders.
But in the kitchen?
We speak one language.
The language of care, of celebration, of flour turned into joy.

Pass the thekua. Or the churro. Or the klejner.
At this point, it’s all one delicious family.