sushka
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English
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Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]sushka (plural sushkas or sushki)
- A traditional Eastern European small, crunchy, mildly sweet bread ring eaten for dessert, usually with tea or coffee.
- [1920], Maxim Gorky [pseudonym; Alexey Maximovich Pyeshkov], translated by R[ochelle] S[lavyanskaia] Townsend, “Twenty-Six Men and a Girl”, in John A[lexander] Hammerton, editor, The Masterpiece Library of Short Stories: The Thousand Best Complete Tales of all Times and all Countries, volume XIII (Russian, Etc.), London: The Educational Book Company Limited, page 80:
- There were twenty-six of us—twenty-six living machines shut up in a damp cellar, where from morning till night we kneaded dough and made it into krendels and sushkas.
- [original: Нас было двадцать шесть человек — двадцать шесть живых машин, запертых в сыром подвале, где мы с утра до вечера месили тесто, делая крендели и сушки.]
- Nas bylo dvadcatʹ šestʹ čelovek — dvadcatʹ šestʹ živyx mašin, zapertyx v syrom podvale, gde my s utra do večera mesili testo, delaja krendeli i suški.
- 1966, Translations on Soviet Law and Social Regulations, U.S. Department of Commerce, Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, Joint Publications Research Service, page 16:
- And after all, for beer we require traditional snacks: Caspian roaches, crawfish, hard-boiled eggs, not to mention peas, sushkas, black zwiebacks...
- 1990, “Breads”, in Culture and Life, U.S.S.R. Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), page 47, column 1:
- Some of the sushkas, which are thin dry rings of dough were even named after famous writers and poets who showed a predilection for them. There were vanilla sushkas named after Pushkin, sushkas made with mustard oil named after Lermontov, sushkas with poppy seeds that bore the name of Chekhov and salt ones that were liked by Yesenin.
- 2018, Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Viking, →ISBN, page 30:
- Beer took up most of the small space, but they also had cold cuts—that must have been the source of the smell—and, more important, what I was looking for: sushki. These were round, crunchy, slightly sweet bread rings. Because they were a little sweet you could have them with tea, but because they weren’t too sweet you could also have them with beer. I bought two packets, one with poppy seeds, one without. Unlike everything else in the new Russia, sushki were still cheap.
- 2019, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, translated by Imogen Taylor, “Etya and Shura”, in Beside Myself: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Other Press, →ISBN, page 141:
- Alexander Isaakovich, his wife and his little girl were on two occasions invited to the dacha of a superior party official to stir jam into black tea and nibble at sushki. […] They dunked their sushki in the sweet black tea, squinted at the American-looking mid-range car that was parked in the vine-covered garage construction—a dark blue Pobeda, a “Victory”—and held sophisticated conversations about Russian literature and the German-Soviet war.
- 2023, Nanda Milbreta, “How We Killed the Worms”, in Kommunalka Child, London: Austin Macauley Publishers, →ISBN, part I:
- As a child I was often hungry and hunger made me impatient. If my mother was very late with cooking, she gave us a common flour-based snack, bubliki, baranki, sushki, suhariki or pryaniki. It was only in retrospect that I realised that all these traditional Eastern-European snacks were a variation of dried bread. When she handed out one of the treats, she said that they were meant to “kill the worm” (“zamarit chervichka” in Russian). At that time, I interpreted this literally, as I didn’t know that this was an expression that meant “to have a small bite before a proper meal”.
- 2024, Ann Charles, Sam Lucky, Hip Deep in Bad Company (Deadwood Undertaker; 5)[2], Prescott, Ariz., →ISBN:
- “Here, sushki, warm from oven.” / She grabbed two and thanked him in her best Russian, “Spu-see-buh.” / Alexey and Dmitry had taught her that sushki was one of her favorite snacks. If she even thought about the crunchy, ring-shaped sweet bread, she practically drooled.
