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JewishHubAzerbaijan

Heritage

Jewish cuisine of Azerbaijan

Dishes of Azerbaijan's Jewish communities as part of the archive: each record names the community, the occasion, the speaker and the source. Recipes and cooking live at The Kosher Table.

  • Khoyagushtkhoyagusht (hoyagusht)

    Community contributed

    All three consulted sources call this a dish of the Mountain Jews' own, and Wikipedia calls it their “national dish”. The name is read as a compound: *khoya* — eggs, *gusht* — meat; Flavors of Baku notes the word is of Persian origin. Agreement ends there. Wikipedia describes a meat pie of eggs, turmeric and long-simmered meat (usually mutton or goat) with its broth — no chestnuts. Flavors of Baku defines it as a dish of meat, eggs and chestnuts, with chestnuts essential and no turmeric at all. Aish describes a frittata-like egg dish with chestnuts. The disagreement is about what the dish fundamentally is, so it is recorded here rather than resolved into a single version.

    Community:
    Mountain Jews
    Occasion:
    No source ties it to a fixed holiday. Flavors of Baku notes it is usually served with rice (osh) and sometimes with matzah, but draws no Passover connection.

    Sources

  • Taratara

    Community contributed

    A mallow pottage with meat — a dish Aish calls outright unique to Mountain Jewish cooking. Wikipedia describes tara as a mallow stew with meat, dried cherry plum, garlic, dill and coriander; Aish as a soup of local mallow or chard with chopped meat, topped with crumbled matzah. Both sources independently tie it to Passover, and on that they agree.

    Community:
    Mountain Jews
    Occasion:
    Passover, per both sources.

    Sources

  • Yakhni Nisonuiyakhni nisonui

    Needs review

    A first-day-of-Passover dish: lamb, potatoes, onions, eggs, dried cherry plum and cinnamon — the same as eshkene but without the herbs, and it is the absence of herbs that distinguishes it. The record rests on one source: an unfootnoted bullet in a Wikipedia section that Wikipedia itself flags as needing citations. The description has no author, no reference and no independent corroboration, so the record is marked “needs review”. We publish it as a recorded claim, not an established fact: if you hold a cookbook or an interview recording that names this dish, write to us.

    Community:
    Mountain Jews
    Occasion:
    The first day of Passover.

    Sources

Section last checked: 19 September 2026