Ashak
آشکāshak
Leek dumplings under yoghurt and meat sauce.
- First record
- Not dated yet
- Fold
- Half-moon
- Cooked
- Boiled
Anatomy
Inside
- Wrapper
- Wheat doughThin
- Filling
- Gandana (leek/chive)
- Cooked
- Boiled
- Size
- About 6 cm across
Tastes of
- gandana leek
- garlic yoghurt
- meat sauce
- dried mint
Texture
- soft
Field notes
Story
Afghan boiled dumplings filled with gandana (garlic chives or leek), layered with garlic yoghurt and a meat or lentil sauce, and finished with dried mint.
- How to eat it
- Layered on a platter with yoghurt and sauce.
- When
- Eid, weddings.
Did you know Its filling is leek or chives, but it is usually served under a meat sauce, and it is boiled where mantu is steamed.
Range
Where
From Afghanistan.
Pin · Afghanistan, pinned at Kabul (where it is a classic gathering dish); no documented place of origin · country, not a town
- OriginAfghanistan · Khorasan · country · Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks
How sure we are
Evidence
Reasonably sure. Reference works agree, but we have not yet found a dated or primary source.
We list 3 sources: 2 secondary, 1 unverified. How grading works.
First record No dated text found. Steingass (1892) has اشك only as Turkish 'donkey'; Raverty's Pashto dictionary (1860) has no entry (both searched on DSAL).
Sources
- S
ĀŠPAZĪ (cookery), Encyclopaedia Iranica (1987, updated 2016)
āšak named (with āš, mantū, ḡōšbāra, qūš-tīlī) as one of the stuffed-pasta 'ravioli' preparations that "still occupy an important place" in the present-day cookery of Afghanistan and neighbouring Central Asian states.
- S
Afghan Food & Cookery: Noshe Djan (Prospect Books 1986; Hippocrene 2000)
Helen Saberi, Afghan Food & Cookery (Noshe Djan) — the standard English reference for ashak; not opened here.
- G
Aushak/ashak: Afghan pasta dumplings filled with chives, with a (frequently meaty) tomato sauce, yoghurt and dried mint; time-consuming, served on holidays and special gatherings. (Wikipedia's citations are a food.com recipe, Eskin 2014 and a culture website — none scholarly.)
Found by research and reviewed, October 2026.
Notes from the research
Vegetarian filling.
The tagline and story are editorial; facts trace to the atlas research. History sources are from the atlas and not yet independently checked.
Family B
