pryanik
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: pryaniks
form: pryaniki
form: prianik
Etymology: From Russian пря́ник (prjánik).
Senses: examples: text: Dip the pryaniki in the glaze while they are still hot.
ref: 1968, Nina Petrova, “[Cakes] Pryaniki”, in Russian Cookery (Penguin Handbook; 140), Harmondsworth; Baltimore, Md.; Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, →LCCN, page 136:
text: MOULDING BOARDS FOR PRYANIKS FROM POSHEKHONYE / The boards for moulding the Russian pryaniks (a kind of gingerbread, made of flour, honey or treacle, and spices), are interesting objects of folk art.
ref: 1969, Soobshchenii͡a, volumes 30–37, page 74, column 2:
text: After his interview, Vikenty went to the Central Post Office and wired five thousand roubles to Lida for her to buy some things in the camp store—sometimes they had dried fish, and pryaniki made in the thirties—hard as iron, but spicy enough when soaked in water.
ref: 1978, Victor Muravin, translated by Alan Thomas, “After Ten Years”, in The Diary of Vikenty Angarov, New York, N.Y.: Newsweek Books, →ISBN, page 146:
text: The artists who belonged to the Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group, sought new motifs in folk wood carvings, embroidery, icons, antique carpets, and figured treacle cakes (pryaniks).
ref: 1987, Ruth Apter-Gabriel, editor, Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-garde Art, 1912-1928, Israel Museum, →ISBN, page 236:
text: Who’ll have some pryaniki with honey, who’ll have cheap ones with molasses! Buy them up, boys, give them to the pretty girls!
ref: 1996, Richard Taruskin, “[Punch into Pierrot (Petrushka)] Shirokaya Maslenitsa: The Grand Shrovetide”, in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, volume I, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, part II (A Perfect Symbiosis), page 695:
text: I will prepare Russian Pryaniks—maybe you call them honey cakes—for dessert and also lemon tarts with blueberry sauce.
ref: 2000, Colleen Coble, From Russia with Love, Uhrichsville, Oh.: Heartsong Presents, →ISBN, page 71:
text: Tula is a big industrial city with about 594000 inhabitants. It is famous for producing three important things: guns, samovars and traditional cakes called pryaniks.
ref: 2003, Suo, volumes 54–56, page 167:
text: Tea is drunk with various different accompaniments such as rolls, barankas (a dry, ring-shaped roll) or pryaniks (spice cakes), which are specially produced to be taken with tea.
ref: 2007, Anna Pavlovskaya, “The Russian Feast”, in CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette: Russia, Tarrytown, N.Y.: Marshall Cavendish Editions, published 2008, →ISBN, page 194:
text: birch bark braiding, wood-carving, traditional pryaniks and kozoolyas (ginger-bread)
ref: 2007, Т.А. Левачева, Русский народный костюм, Arkhangelsk: ИПП «Правда Севера», →ISBN, page 17:
text: A few minutes later, she returned with a plate of pryaniki. The soothing scents of vanilla and nutmeg filled the air as Bailey bit into the sweet Russian gingerbread treat.
ref: 2012, Dani Pettrey, chapter 16, in Submerged (Alaskan Courage; 1), Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, →ISBN, page 115:
text: He missed stopping at a bakery on the way home from the physics building on Lebedev Street to buy pryaniki, brown spice cookies he could smell through the bag and that left grease stains in its bottom.
ref: 2016 July, Katie Kennedy, “No Helmet”, in Learning to Swear in America, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 103:
text: I pluck a mug from the cabinet and add the cream and sugar as the coffee percolates. I also take two pryaniks and put them on a plate for Luuk.
ref: 2018, Josie Brown, “Hard News”, in The Housewife Assassin’s Fourth Estate Sale, San Francisco, Calif.: Signal Press Books, →ISBN:
text: Baked pryaniks (below) are made from flour and honey, and sometimes with ginger or pepper. They taste like gingerbread. The famed Tula pryanik comes from the city of Tula near Moscow and was first mentioned in 1685. In the 2018 FIFA World Cup it was sold in the form of a matryoshka, a Russian doll, (itself a Russian DO) playing football.
ref: 2018 October, Daria Novozhilkina, “Origin-based products in the Russian Federation”, in WIPO Magazine, number 5, World Intellectual Property Organization, page 45:
text: The decorative effect is achieved by combining a profile image in one composition (a samovar with a chimney and a cup) and a top view (napkin, saucer, pryanik). […] Pryanik with the inscription "A Gift from Tula" is placed in the foreground. […] Let us consider the drawing "Symbols of Tula" by Maxim Egoshin (8 y/o, Yasny, Orenburg region). Samovar, cup, sugar bowl, three Tula pryaniks of different shapes are located on the windowsill. […] There is a rectangular pryanik with the inscription "Tula" with the image of crossed guns in the foreground, another of the same shape, but with the inscription "Tula pryanik". The author drew another pryanik in the form of an expanded Tula harmonica, in the far corner of the windowsill.
ref: 2020, Ekaterina Akishina, Nadezhda Sevryukova, “Decorative Effect in the Solution of Children's Drawings on Historical Topics”, in Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, →DOI, page 26:
text: The pryaniks are in the shape of the products Tula is famous for. This one is a «samovar» (a kind of a tea pot), this one is a gun, and this is... umm...
ref: 2022, Евгения Дикова, Роман по-французски, Litres, →ISBN:
text: There are honey, pastry, sugar, wheaten, rye, lemon, almond, mint, and raspberry pryaniks. […] Most Russian pryaniks (except for mint and Vyazma) are covered with glaze, most often white, sometimes colorful, including pink.
ref: 2022, Nina Myachikova, Mark Shamtsyan, “Culinary traditions, food, and eating habits in Russia”, in Diana Bogueva, Tetiana Golikova, Mark Shamtsyan, Ida Jakobsone, Maris Jakobsons, editors, Nutritional and Health Aspects of Food in Eastern Europe (Elsevier Traditional and Ethnic Food Series), Academic Press, →ISBN, pages 33–34:
text: The Japanese community in Vladivostok lived a life that preserved their traditional culture but also conformed to the local cultural diversity. The house had tatami mats, pechka (a Russian stove) and samovar (a Russian water boiler for tea). Japanese cuisine was prepared from food shipped directly from Japanese ports, but Russian food such as Chinese, pryaniks (Russian traditional baked sweets) and black bread was also eaten daily.
ref: 2023, Kumi Tateoka, “Vladivostok as а Meeting Point between West and East at the Beginning of the 20th Century (Around Years of Siberian Investigation)”, in Shin’ichi Murata, Stefano Aloe, editors, The Reception of East Slavic Literatures in the West and the East (Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici; 55), Florence: Firenze University Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, part II (Soviet Encounters and Stalinist Canon: Influence and Reception), page 179:
text: 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”.
ref: 2023, Nanda Milbreta, “How We Killed the Worms”, in Kommunalka Child, London: Austin Macauley Publishers, →ISBN, part I:
glosses: A Russian sweet-baked good, traditionally made from flour and honey.
Related terms: piernik