New Delhi, Nov. 22 -- My forefathers typically ate a breakfast of seven mithais and a big glass of badam milk. The assortment of sweets was never repeated in the same week," says Lipika Dudhoria about her family's rich halwai tradition. She belongs to the seventh generation of Rai Bahadur Singh Budh Sing Dudhoria, an affluent textile merchant, who migrated from the Shekhawati region in Rajasthan in the 1700s to settle on the banks of the Hooghly in Murshidabad, West Bengal. Those were prosperous times, as the first nawab of Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan, had shifted his capital here, transforming the region into a bustling economic hub.

Along with her brother Darshan, Lipika runs Bari Kothi, the family's ancestral mansion that was restored i...