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
Lotus seed paste to produce a smooth, sweet paste. The lotus paste used by most Chinese cooks requires further preparation by dry cooking the sweetened paste over heat with caramelized sugar and vegetable oil. This produces a lotus paste that is tan coloured with a satiny sheen, which is rich, sweet, and silky with a slight fragrance of caramel. Some cooks choose to treat the dried lotus seeds with a lye solution before initially stewing them in order to shorten their cooking time. Lotus paste is used in Chinese cuisine as a filling for mooncake, "baozi", and other sweet pastries. Another common use