The traditions of sheep breeding, which the ancestors of the Gagauz possessed in the Balkans, have determined a rich assortment of mutton in the food of the modern Gagauz. The Gagauz people have long known such methods of preparing lamb for future use as salting, drying, smoking. A popular hot dish is roast lamb, seasoned with wine and spices. The oldest dish is the lamb roasting in the ashes. On holidays, the Gagauz people roasted lamb stuffed with wheat or rice groats and offal, and also cooked pieces of meat with cereals in large cauldrons. Lamb soup is still made from liquid dishes. Sheep breeding provided the Gagauz with dairy products. Sour milk was not a drink, but a food, since it was traditionally eaten with spoons from a plate. From salted cheese produced cheese, which was used as a filling for snacks and flour products. At present, the above-mentioned types of food and dishes are preserved in the traditions of the Gagauz diet, despite the fact that due to transformation processes, there are not always sheep in the household. Parallels with the nutritional traditions of other Turkic-speaking peoples showed that all the names of dishes prepared from sheep-breeding products are Turkic in origin. This fact allows us to put forward the assumption that the ancestors of the Gagauz were the tribes of the Pechenegs, Uzes, Polovtsians, whose sheep breeding was also one of their main occupations.