Some of the oldest recipes aren’t those index cards filed neatly in your grandmother’s recipe box but are on thick clay tablets, no knew! A group of scholars made 3-D printings of the oldest recorded recipes in the world. The question is, do recipes from 4,000 years ago actually taste good?
It’s taken a long time for these 1730 BC ancient Mesopotamian recipes to be cooked up. In the 1940s an academic named Mary Hussey suggested that the string of food names and steps may be recipes, but other scholars dismissed the theory, insisting the lists of food words were simply nonsensical writings. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when an Assyrian expert Jean Bottero had to write about ancient cuisine, finally explored Hussey’s theory, and saw it held water. Indeed the tablets were talking about recipes, the downfall was that Bottero was working alone and was using a poor translation so the recipes did not turn out successful, at least Bottero considered it a kitchen failure.
Nowadays these thirty recipes are seeing the insides of a kitchen again, this time it’s a little different. Unlike Bottero, who went at it alone, a team of translators, historians, biologists, and culinary experts dissected these recipes with scientific precision, trying to piece together the recipes, which were sometimes literally lost in translation or physically disintegrated away.
The recipes are not as weird and exotic as one may think. Almost all of the ingredients are things we use and consume daily. Mesopotamia, a region that is comprised of modern-day Syria, Iraq, and Turkey was a part of the fertile crescent land, a location of thriving civilizations and bountiful agriculture.
Ingredients like mustard seeds, beets, and other aromatics make this dish called Tuhni, which is an ancient version of modern-day borscht. Another stew is hearty, getting its savory flavor from lamb, bone broth, and cream.
You would think 4000-year-old recipes would be very weird, almost too odd to eat, but there were more similarities than differences. Just like us who love a good casserole or a hearty stew, most recipes were one-pot, stew-like dishes. The scholars were also surprised by the cooking instructions and how these steps were very similar to how we build flavor and cook up meals today. Additions of fresh garnishes like herbs at the end are also a surprisingly modern element for these ancient recipes.
Looking and tasting these recipes show that the ancient civilizations had a complex culinary cuisine that still tastes great today.