An international team of experts has recreated 4.000-year-old dishes from ancient Mesopotamia

Lentil goulash/Photo: Printscreen/Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever wondered what people ate 4.000 years ago? A team of international scientists versed in culinary history, food chemistry and cuneiform (the Babylonian writing system first developed by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia) has been working for several years to recreate (recreate) ancient dishes according to the world's oldest recipes known to us .

The recipes were found on cuneiform tablets from Yale University's Babylonian Collection and include instructions for making lamb stew, chicken pot pies, light vegetable soups, and beetroot stews.

The recipes were short and not very informative, so the team of scientists used their knowledge of human tastes, basic ingredients for preparing dishes that don't change drastically over time, and what they assumed might be the correct ratios of the ingredients to come to the closest performance of the authentic recipe.

Lamb goulash

The first dish they were able to recreate was lamb goulash mee poojadi. The original instructions read more like a list of ingredients than a recipe: “Use meat. Prepare water. Add fine salt, dry barley cakes, onions, Persian shallots and milk. Crush and add leeks and garlic."

The final version of the dish that the scientists recreated has a rich flavor and texture achieved after months of trial and error and using the scientific method of variables and controls to make the results as believable as possible.

They realized, for example, that the inclusion of soapwort, a perennial plant sometimes used to make soap, was a mistranslation. The addition of this ingredient in any measure made the dish bitter, frothy and completely tasteless.

Onion soup

Another dish they managed to recreate is called pashrutum, which the research team translated as "relaxation". It is a soup with pronounced flavors of onions, leeks and coriander, and they believe it was given to people with colds.

Meat pie

The third dish resembles a chicken pie, with layered dough and pieces of chicken drenched in some kind of ancient béchamel sauce. The presentation of this dish included an element of surprise as it was served covered with a crispy lid of thin dough, which diners opened at the start of the meal to reveal the meat inside.

This detail, the team of experts interpreted as a technique they call "food within food", which they believe is repeated in Iraq's medieval traditions as well as in contemporary Iraqi cuisine.

Beetroot soup

Finally, scientists were able to recreate a dish called tuh'u (tuh'u), which is made from red beetroot and has similarities to borscht, which is common in Ashkenazi cuisine, as well as to a stew common among Iraqi Jews called kofta shulundar hamud (sweet and sour beetroot meatballs).

This stew is one of the most common dishes in Iraq today and it is fascinating to see how such a simple dish has survived in almost the same form from ancient times to the present day.

Despite the limited and often vague instructions found on the clay tablets, scientists have managed to bring these ancient dishes to life using a combination of scientific methods, culinary expertise and a bit of creative experimentation.

The end result is a fascinating look at the sophisticated culinary traditions of our ancestors and a reminder that the love of good food and the desire to create delicious dishes is a universal human experience that has stood the test of time.

 

 

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