Circassian p'aste

пастэ

SDDated text Family independent · Independent / unaffiliated

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Region: Caucasus minorities and Crimean Tatar
First record: 1840 · Empires & migration
Fold: Slices of a loaf
Cooked: Served with boiled mutton (melil gheva), garlic gravy ships, sausages and liver. Meat on skewers is even laid on p'aste

Anatomy

Inside

Dough: Unfilled; swallow-like
Made with: Crushed-millet stiff porridge, unsalted, cut into pieces
Cooked: Served with boiled mutton (melil gheva), garlic gravy ships, sausages and liver. Meat on skewers is even laid on p'aste
Size: About 9 cm across
Note: A borderline case: it stretches the definition of a dumpling.

Not known yet We don’t yet have a photo we can use, a written story, a recipe or a precise place of origin for Circassian p'aste. What we do have is below, with its sources.

Range

Where

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From Circassia.

Pin · Adygea (Maykop) · historical or cultural region, not a town

How sure we are

Evidence

Fairly sure. A dated text records it by 1840.

We list 3 sources: 2 dated texts, 1 secondary. How grading works.

First record Bell, Journal of a Residence in Circassia, 1840: "pasta", a thick millet porridge (D); first found

Sources

D
Journal of a Residence in Circassia during the Years 1837, 1838 and 1839, vol. 1
Dated text · James Stanislaus Bell; Edward Moxon, London, 1840 (scan on archive.org, University of Toronto copy) · 1840 (journal of 1837–1839)
Travel journal, vol. 1 (OCR text of the scan): 'Fresh supplies of pasta* and meat (either stewed or roasted) — pasta and goats' milk — pasta, or Turkey-corn bread, with honey, are kept sending in upon me'; footnote '* A…
Travel journal, vol. 1 (OCR text of the scan): 'Fresh supplies of pasta* and meat (either stewed or roasted) — pasta and goats' milk — pasta, or Turkey-corn bread, with honey, are kept sending in upon me'; footnote '* A thick porridge made of millet.' Further passages: 'a great mess of thick pasta, with a wooden bowl stuck in the midst'; 'the immense pasta-cauldron was slung; and on this pasta (without even salt ...)'; 'cold pasta and some hard-boiled eggs'; 'The pasta is here far better ... than in the south'.
D
Circassian Cuisine
Dated text · Amjad Jaimoukha (ed.); Sanjalay Press, Amman, 2004 (CircassianWorld.com PDF, copy on aheku.net)
Recipe '31. Pasta (P'aste)': 'In the old days, pasta was the staple food of the Circassians ... It was used as a bread ... pasta made from husked millet is the most widespread kind'; when firm it 'is cut into pieces and served'. Glossary: 'P'aste: Pasta, ground-millet dumplings.'
S
Pasta (1840); Mid-West & Windy City (ADS-L post, April 2002)
Secondary consensus · ADS-L mailing list archive (linguistlist.org) · 1840
American Dialect Society list post collecting the same 1840 citations with page numbers: vol. 1 pp. 28, 32, 64, 65, 94; vol. 2 p. 373 ('an abundant repast of meat and pasta').

Found by research in October 2026; awaiting editorial review.

Notes from the research

Jaimoukha calls it "crushed-millet dumplings". It is the everyday Circassian staple.

History sources are from the atlas and not yet independently checked.

Family independent

Kin

More independent / unaffiliated