Chak-chak

Chak-chak (Чәкчәк in Tatar) is a sweet made by frying small cut pieces of dough in oil and binding them with a honey-based syrup. It is widely eaten from the Volga region to Central Asia, including Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. It comes both heaped into a mound and cut into bite-sized pieces, and in either form the small granules of fried dough remain visible.

Chak-chak dough cut into thin strips before frying. Photo: Pannet, 2025-06-03, location unknown. Original image / CC BY 4.0. Downsized version from the hosting source; no additional processing.

The size the dough is cut to changes the texture

A wheat-flour dough made with eggs is cut into thin strips or rolled into small balls and dropped into hot oil. While unleavened methods are widely recorded, the recettes (ingredient proportions and methods) collected by Tatarstan’s cultural resources center also include an example using yeast. In both cases, the dough is made into small pieces, fried, and then bound with syrup afterward.

The honey syrup added after frying provides sweetness and at the same time joins the separate granules. Because the shape is first made by frying and the pieces are joined afterward with honey syrup, the boundaries between granules remain even when the whole is cut into portions. The stickiness of the honey-coated exterior and the light crunch of the fried dough inside it are created in separate steps.

Round granules and long, noodle-like ones feel different when you bite into a piece. For the Tatar celebratory sweet, a method of making granules about the size of pine nuts or hazelnuts is recorded. Meanwhile, Bukhara’s kalyave and the Kazakh shekshek include versions made with dough cut into noodles. Within the shared technique of cutting the dough small, the shape of the granules creates regional differences.

The step of frying long strips of dough in oil to make chak-chak. Photo: Pannet, 2025-06-03, location unknown. Original image / CC BY 4.0. Downsized version from the hosting source; no additional processing.

Fried chak-chak dough before being bound with honey. The shape of the elongated granules is already formed. Photo: Source, Pannet, 2025-06-03, location unknown, CC BY 4.0. Image not modified (downsized version from the hosting source).

Wedding chak-chak brought by the bride and her mother

Chak-chak has been handed down as an indispensable sweet at Tatar weddings. The one the bride brings to her husband’s home is called “яшь килен чәкчәге,” and the one the bride’s mother brings is called “кодагый чәкчәге.” In the celebration, what is distinguished is not only the contents of the sweet but also who presented it to whom.

For weddings it is shaped large and decorated with colored candies, dragées and the like. A custom has also been recorded of entrusting its making to a skilled woman and carrying the finished sweet to the banquet covered with cloth or a thin fruit confection. The person who removes the cover to “open” it promises a gift to the newlyweds, and among the Siberian Tatars there are cases where that person is also given a shirt. Carrying the large heaped sweet before the guests, opening the cover and cutting it into portions together make up one sequence in the wedding gift exchange.

There are also customs that associate taking two pieces of the sweet, or carrying two sets of gifts, with the bond between the couple and between the two families. In records of Kazan Tatar weddings, the procession of gifts carried by the bride’s parents includes bread, chak-chak, pies and a goose. None of these details are rules that uniformly govern weddings everywhere; they show that the sweet was one of the gifts that passed between the two families.

The Chak-Chak Museum in Kazan presents the occasion of eating the sweet as a way to learn about Tatar home life and hospitality. It lets visitors gather around tea and sweets, making it a place to experience hospitality that exhibits alone cannot fully convey. Chak-chak is a souvenir product and, at the same time, a food for the table, served to guests as something sweet.

Methods and celebrations recorded in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

The confectioner Shusaku Hayashi, invited into a home in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, saw a method in which thinly rolled dough was cut into squares of about 1 centimeter, dried for about an hour, then fried and bound with warmed honey. This household also added vodka to the dough. According to him, chak-chak appeared not only as a large sweet for weddings but also on display at markets and in confectionery shops.

Kenichi Sasaki, a JICA Overseas Cooperation Volunteer who lived in Uzbekistan, introduces chak-chak as a sweet served at both home parties and weddings. He also reports that at weddings its shape and sweetness are associated with happiness, and the honey with the strong bond between the couple. With the same sweet, people find celebratory meaning not only in the roles of those who give it but also in its sweetness and ingredients.

Among sweets bound with honey

Compared with Georgia’s gozinaki, in which nuts are bound with honey, chak-chak makes the granules themselves from flour and eggs. Most of the sweet’s volume is fried dough. A sweet that keeps the crunch of nuts and one that keeps granules made by frying dough are both bound with honey, but the steps before that differ.

Even among Tatar sweets, its structure differs from that of talkysh kaleve, which gathers thread-like sugar. Some baursak in southeastern Tatarstan also use fried dough, but the kind introduced by the local cultural resources center has larger pieces than chak-chak and is finished with a sugar coating rather than honey. Even with similar ingredients, the size of the granules and the way sweetness is used to bind them differ.

A wide distribution, and local forms

Besides Tatar, similar names exist in Bashkir, Kazakh and other languages. It has spread across the tables of neighboring peoples, with the way the granules are cut, the syrup formulation and the decoration varying by region and household. In today’s Kazan, it is also well known as a boxed souvenir.

Glossary