World’s Oldest Recipes of Making Broth, Pie and Stew Detailed in Babylonian Cuneiform, Surprise Experts
Like the present-day cookbooks, our ancestors also recorded recipes. In the early 1900s, Yale University received some intriguing Babylonian clay tablets from southern Iraq, dating back to 1730 B.C., stated Live Science. For a long time, the content of these tablets remained a mystery. In 1945, scholar Mary Hussey speculated that the instructions could be for recipes. If true, that meant the tablets were the oldest known recipes written down by humankind. After the analysis of the cuneiform script on the tablets, archaeologist Jean Bottéro in the 1980s confirmed that the assertion was true.
However, he added that the recipes are not suitable for a modern-day palate. In 2019, a team of researchers decided to recreate the recipes. Gojko Barjamovic, a senior lecturer and senior research scholar in Assyriology at Yale, along with an interdisciplinary team, translated the writings as well as cooked the recipes. The pursuit was not easy at all, as many of the tablets were damaged, and some names were incomprehensible.
The team was dealing with four tablets, of which three dated back to 1730 B.C., while the fourth one was created 1000 years later, stated BBC. Amongst the three older tablets, the most intact one has more of a list of ingredients used to make 25 recipes of stews and broths. The other two had detailed recipes, incorporating cooking instructions and presentation suggestions, as per the researchers. However, they were broken in many parts, which affected their legibility for the experts. The team decided to make some assumptions to fill the gaps left by many of the recipes.
The proportion of ingredients was determined by combining factors like hypothesis, controls, and variables. The team assumed that human tastes and preparation essentials in terms of food did not change a lot over the centuries. Based on this, they figured out how a particular dish came into being. One of the writings read, "Meat is used. You prepare water. You add fine-grained salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, and milk. You crush and add leek and garlic." The experts believed that meat remained the same then and now, and from a physics point of view, its processing also didn't change.
The translation indicated that the four tablets contained ingredients and instructions for a variety of dishes, stated Live Science. Along with stews and broths, there was information about a pie stuffed with songbird, a dish centred around a small mammal, and green wheat. Some of the noteworthy ingredients were lamb and cilantro. Researchers also found some ingredients during translation that are not used by the majority of the human population in today's age. These ingredients include items like blood and cooked rodents.
In total, experts were able to figure out four dishes from the oldest tablet, stated BBC. Experts think that each of these dishes had a specific use. Pashrutum, a soup mentioned in the list, could be given to a person suffering from a cold, as per researchers. Elamite broth, another one of the listed dishes, has been labeled as a foreign dish in the tablet. This implies that just like the present, in the past too, people incorporated dishes from foreign cultures into their daily lives. In one of the dishes, researchers saw a form of lamb stew that is still enjoyed in Iraq. The mentioned techniques showcase the expertise with which 4,000-year-old chefs worked back in the day.
All the dishes resembled modern-day Iraqi cuisine, stated Live Science. The tablets imply that food was created with a lot of care and thought. This showcases how food remains a culturally important factor throughout the centuries.