Kevda plant well known for the fragrant kewra essence, used in sweets, traditional medicine and also in temples has survived in the Indian subcontinent for at least 24 million years and is a living survivor from India's ancient tropical forests.
Pandanus is mainly restricted to tropical and subtropical regions. However, fossil evidence from Europe and North America, dating back 85–66 million years, indicates that its ancestors once had a much wider distribution across the Northern Hemisphere. As global climates cooled after about 34 million years ago, these plants gradually disappeared from many regions and became restricted to the tropics.
Kevda or Ketaki is used to make perfumes and its flowers are famous in India for its fragrance. It was considered to be one of the finest scents India offered by the Moghul emperors.
A perfumed oil and fragrant attar are both extracted from the flower and used as medicines as well as scents. Its oil is used to treat headaches, earaches and rheumatic pains.
Kewra water is an extract that is distilled from pandanus flowers. It is a transparent liquid, almost similar to rose water. Although pandanus trees grow almost everywhere in tropical Asia, kewra water is still mainly a Northern Indian flavouring that is not used anywhere else.
In Western cooking, kewra water makes a fine alternative to the flower essences like rose or orange essence. It can be substituted with kewra essence, which is more concentrated.
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