Tahini cuneiform document written 4000 years ago that describes the custom of serving the gods sesame wine. The historian Herodotus writes about the cultivation of sesame 3500 years ago in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. It was mainly used as a source of oil. Tahini is mentioned as an ingredient of "hummus kasa", a recipe transcribed in an anonymous 13th-century Arabic cookbook, "Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada". Sesame paste is an ingredient in some Chinese and Japanese dishes; Sichuan cuisine uses it in some recipes for dandan noodles. Sesame paste is also used in Indian cuisine. In the
Red bean paste possible to remove the husk by sieving after cooking, but before sweetening, resulting in a red paste that is smoother and more homogeneous. In Japanese, a number of names are used to refer to red bean paste; these include , , and . Strictly speaking, the term "an" can refer to almost any sweet, edible, mashed paste, with referring specifically to the paste made with red beans, although without qualifiers red beans are assumed. Other common forms of "an" include , made from navy or other white beans, green beans, and , made from chestnuts. Similarly, the Chinese term "dòushā"