Gozinaki

Gozinaki (გოზინაყი) is a Georgian New Year confection made by binding chopped nuts with honey and cutting the result into pieces. Walnuts are the typical nut. In the cut face, pieces of nut are densely packed, and the honey fills the gaps between them. Rather than coating nuts in a thick layer of candy, this method joins the pieces into a single sheet. Gozinaki is best known cut into thin diamonds.

Chopped walnuts are densely packed, with honey binding the pieces together. Individual pieces remain visible in the diamond-shaped cross-section. Photo: Source, Georgia About / GeorgianRecipes.net, CC BY 3.0. Image not modified (reduced-size version from the hosting source).

The same honey can be cooked down in more than one way

To make gozinaki, the walnuts are first lightly toasted, their thin skins are removed, and then they are chopped. The honey is heated in a heavy-bottomed pot, and the walnuts are added once it has thickened sufficiently. How long it takes to cook down also depends on the condition of the honey. Fresh honey with a high water content takes correspondingly longer to concentrate. Gozinaki is not a confection that reaches the same firmness simply because honey has been added.

One method introduced in Georgia involves repeatedly bringing the honey to a boil and letting it cool. A small amount of honey is dropped into water to see whether it immediately dissolves and disperses, and this is used to judge when to mix in the nuts. On the other hand, another recipe (ingredient proportions and method) handed down in a family thickens the honey by heating it continuously in one go. Both are methods of concentrating the honey to bind the pieces together.

Some methods add a small amount of sugar, so the ingredients are not limited to just two, honey and walnuts. However, increasing the amount of sugar to bring it closer to hard candy is not always desirable. The cook judges when to stop heating the honey and finishes it to a firmness that can be lifted off the plate and chewed. Some versions are hard, resembling what is called brittle in English, but some family recipes make it on the softer side.

After mixing, the mixture is spread on a board moistened with water and evened out to a uniform thickness with a moistened rolling pin or other tool. The water is used not to cook the ingredients but to keep the hot honey from sticking to the work surface. Because it is cut before it cools and sets, the work from the end of cooking down to cutting forms one continuous process. The diamond shape is not only decorative; it is also the shape that results from cutting a large slab diagonally into portions.

Those who make it for the New Year, and those who send it far away

Gozinaki is tied to the Georgian New Year table. A household custom has been passed down in which the family member who makes it best takes charge of it, and importance is also placed on whether the years when that person made it before were happy ones. The maker is not necessarily a woman; it is a confection prepared by the family.

Among families living abroad who have carried it on, there is also a memory of a mother making it at the turn of the year, with wishes for a sweet and healthy year put into it. Some households serve it not only on January 1 but also on January 14, which corresponds to the New Year in the old calendar. Even away from their place of origin, festive confections remain tied to the family calendar.

Because it holds its shape well when carried, gozinaki also serves as a gift for relatives far away. The annual custom of making it at home coexists with its present-day form as a souvenir sold in the market.

Honey and walnuts behind a festive confection

In old Georgian folk belief, honey and walnuts were regarded as sacred foods. Customs are recorded of offering walnuts to the “batonebi (ბატონები),” which are associated with infectious diseases in children, and of mixing honey into korkoti (კორკოტი) at Christmas. These are separate rituals that use the ingredients, but they show that the two ingredients chosen for the New Year sweet held special meaning in everyday life.

In Svaneti, there was also a ritual of scattering a mixture of honey and milk along the paths to which the souls of the dead were believed to return. This is not a ritual of scattering gozinaki itself, but a belief seen in the way honey was used. In Imereti and Racha, gozinaki was also at times called churchkhela (ჩურჩხელა). Apart from the confection widely known by that name today, in which walnuts threaded on a string are coated with layers of fruit juice, the names overlapped regionally.

Local flavors beyond walnuts

In the Racha region, a version made with pumpkin seeds survives. Some products use hazelnuts, almonds or sunflower seeds, and today there are even rounded versions and versions combined with chocolate. While the basic method of binding the pieces with honey is kept, the type of nut and the shape of the confection change.

One explanation of the Georgian name links nigozi (ნიგოზი), meaning walnut, with danakva (დანაყვა), meaning crushing. Ioseb Grishashvili’s Dictionary of Urban Language explains the name from “ნიგოზის დანაყვა,” which corresponds to “crushing walnuts.”

An example of gozinaki made with sunflower seeds. The seeds are bound together and cut into pieces. Photo: WildBoar, 2011-06-25, location unknown. Original image / CC0. Reduced-size version from the hosting source, no additional processing.

Glossary