Ishita Dey’s Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal (published by Routledge in 2026) is an ambitious and insightful ethnographic work. It uses the ubiquitous Bengali confectionery, mishti, as a lens through which to explore profound questions of South Asian history of culinary practices, labour, identity, and political economy. Drawing on her decade-long experience, Dey delivers an invaluable contribution to academic discourses on the intersection of food, culture, and society, particularly within the nascent field of sociology of food. The volume succeeds remarkably in providing a deeply personal yet rarely told story that traverses the intensely historically fraught borders of West Bengal and Bangladesh (referred to as Epar and Opar Bangla).

The book’s argument is elegantly encapsulated in the title: Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal – that mishti must be understood through the framework of excess. This move pushes back against the binary understanding of food, or as in the essential versus non-essential categorisation, or notions of necessity versus luxury. Dey demonstrates that excess is integral to the cultural production and meaning of mishti, arguing that despite the region’s history of famine, acute hunger, and food security struggles, sweetness endures as a celebrated social fixture. The book explores how this “sweet excess” reproduces itself through material and symbolic meanings, and it weaves itself into the fabric of everyday life, rituals, and cultural identity.

The method employed is a rigorous, multi-sited ethnography, following the life of mishti across sweetshops, domestic spaces, fairs, festivals, cookbooks, and legal battles. Dey’s commitment to tracing the complex geography of sweetness allows her to map how culinary practices are intertwined with the turbulent political histories of the region, including the ruptures caused by Partition and the Liberation War. She captures the subtle cultural markers, such as the regional discourse around “degrees of sweetness” (beshi mishti or more sweet, versus kom mishti or less sweet) used by interlocutors in Epar and Opar Bangla to denote taste, urban/rural distinction, and even national identity.

The book explores how caste and religious hierarchies shape the craft of sweet-making. Dey is able to trace how a historical and linguistic overlap happens between the occupation and caste identity over time. So, she provides how the caste name for people engaged in this form of labour comes to be gradually applied to any person employed in this work, irrespective of their caste, revealing how deeply caste continues to structure notions of skill and identity. In Opar Bangla or Bangladesh, the ‘mythic status’ of craftsmanship is often associated with the surname Ghosh, traditionally linked to the milk-trading caste, even as the trade has diversified to include Muslim owners and artisans. By scrutinising these connections, Dey reveals how caste differences are often “glossed as cultural difference”, reinforcing notions of tradition and authentic craftsmanship. The book is explicitly dedicated “to the invisible labouring bodies who sweat and toil in mishtir dokan across West Bengal and Bangladesh”, honouring the workers (karigar and ustad) who rely on “synesthetic reason”, an acquired knowledge encompassing sight, touch, and smell, honed through repetition, to master their craft.

Dey’s analysis powerfully connects these local culinary traditions to macro political and legal forces. She also extensively examines how the state intervenes in the food economy, particularly through the lens of law and regulation. For instance, the 1960s milk control orders in West Bengal banned the production of chhana-based sweets, arguing that transforming milk into sweets constituted “wastage” and diverted an “essential commodity” away from nutritional consumption for the population. This highlights the ongoing tension between milk as a physiological necessity and sweets as a cultural (and economic) product. Moreover, the book scrutinises the contemporary politics of Geographical Indication (GI) claims, such as those surrounding Banglar Rasogolla and Joynagar Moa. Dey argues that GI laws, introduced partly due to World Trade Organisation obligations, attempt to establish fixed notions of local origins and authorship, often overlooking the complex histories of migration, contested genesis, and the need for cross-border recognition for products with similar names, shared between India and Bangladesh.

Sweet Excess is far more than a cultural history of dessert; it is a meticulously researched work that challenges scholars to view foodways not in isolation, but as deeply intertwined with the social theory and regional epistemologies of South Asia. Dey successfully positions mishti as a complex commodity that continuously navigates cultural value (through rituals like mishtimukh and traditional gifts), artisanal value (through craftsmanship and unique recipes), and standardising value (through legal recognition and branding). Dey’s book is not just a fascinating exploration in the field of Sociology; it also speaks to scholars invested in ethnographic, historical, and cultural studies in South Asia. As an excellent work in the field of sociology of food, the book offers new ways of understanding everyday practices around food at the intersection of culture, identity, and politics in South Asia. Dey shows how the persistence of sweets in a historically food-insecure geography demonstrates that sweetness is a product of excess; non-essential yet aspirational, reflecting a societal capacity for celebration beyond the “bare minimum” needs.

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Ramyani Basak is an auditor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).