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 (), applies to red bean paste when used without qualifiers, although "hóngdòushā" () explicitly means "red bean paste." In Korean, "pat" (, ""V. angularis"") contrasts with "kong" (, "bean"), rather than being considered a type of it. "Kong" ("beans") without qualifiers usually means soybeans. As "so" () means "filling", the word "patso" () means ""pat" filling", with unsweetened dark-red paste as its prototype. "Dan" (, "sweet") attached to "patso" makes "danpat-so" (), the sweetened red bean paste, which is often called "danpat" (; "sweet "pat""). "Geopi" (, "hulled, skinned, peeled, shelled, etc.") attached to "pat" makes "geopipat" (), the dehulled