Before the cola companies got to Madras, the city's cold drink infrastructure was a network of small shops with marble counters, crushed ice, and rows of glass bottles holding syrups in colours that do not occur in nature. The king of those bottles was always the dark amber one: nannari. Sarsaparilla root syrup, cut with lime juice, salt and cold water, handed across the counter faster than the money went the other way.
Those shops are mostly gone, but the drink did not disappear because it stopped working. It disappeared because nobody marketed a root that grows wild and costs almost nothing. Nannari remains what it always was: the best-tasting answer to a Chennai afternoon, and one of the simplest syrups you can make from scratch.
What nannari actually is
Hemidesmus indicus, Indian sarsaparilla, is a slender climbing plant whose roots carry an aromatic compound that smells somewhere between vanilla, camphor and cut hay. Siddha and Ayurvedic practice classifies the root as a coolant and blood purifier. I will not defend the blood purification claim because nobody has properly tested it, but the traditional use pattern, a summer drink taken specifically against heat, prickly rash and urinary discomfort in hot months, has held stable across centuries and across communities that did not otherwise agree on much. Traditions that consistent usually have something underneath them.
What is not in dispute: the drink is water, sugar, salt and lime, which is functional rehydration by any definition, and the root makes it taste interesting enough that you reach for it instead of a cola. Sometimes the mechanism of a health drink is simply that you drink it.
The recipe
- 40g dried nannari roots (sarsaparilla), crushed lightly, or 3 tbsp nannari extract
- 750ml water
- 400g sugar
- 1 tbsp lime juice, for the syrup
- Per glass juice of half a lime, cold water, a pinch of salt
- Crush the dried roots lightly in a mortar, just to crack them open. The aroma lives in the bark layer.
- Soak the crushed roots in 750ml water overnight, covered, at room temperature. The water will turn pale gold and smell faintly of vanilla and forest floor. That smell is the whole point of the exercise.
- Next day, bring the soaking water with the roots to a gentle simmer for 10 minutes. Strain out and discard the roots.
- Add the sugar to the strained liquid and simmer until it reaches a light syrup consistency, about 10 minutes more. It thickens further as it cools.
- Stir in 1 tablespoon of lime juice (it keeps the syrup from crystallising) and bottle once cool. Refrigerated, it lasts a month.
- To serve: 2 tablespoons syrup, juice of half a lime, a small pinch of salt, 200ml cold water. Stir, add ice. Lime and salt are not optional, they are the other two corners of the triangle.
The lime and salt argument
Plain nannari syrup in water tastes pleasant and slightly dull, like an old-fashioned sweet. The shop version was never served that way. Lime sharpens the root's perfume, and a pinch of salt deepens everything, the same trick that works in watermelon juice and aam panna. Sweet, sour, saline: every great Indian street drink is balanced on that triangle, and nannari sherbet might be the cleanest example of it.
Where to find the roots
Any country drug store (naattu marundhu kadai) in Tamil Nadu sells dried nannari root by weight, and online stores ship it everywhere now. 100g costs around 60 to 90 rupees and makes more than a litre of syrup. Check that the roots smell strong and sweet when you crack one, scentless roots are old stock and will give you coloured sugar water.
One overnight soak, 20 minutes at the stove, and your fridge holds a month of the drink old Madras stood in line for. The marble counter shops are not coming back. The syrup can.