> The kind of beets used in such an ancient recipe should not be different from the beets we use today, even in name. We read in Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (by Campbell Thompson, 1948) that in the ancient Mesopotamian region it was called ‘shumundar,’ it was as red as blood, and has a spinning-top shape (pp. 49, 51).
The recipe is also similar to Hamedh [0], a delicacy in Iraqi and Baghdadi Jewish households. The only major difference is the addition of tomatoes thanks to the Columbian Exchange, and rice - which would have not been cultivated or traded in West Asia yet.
On that note, in Arabic, Farsi, and Hindustani the word for Tomato is essentially shared (tumatar/tamatimu) with the English word "tomato".
But anyhow, a lot of home cooking and traditional meals actually have a pretty long history.
> rice - which would have not been cultivated or traded in West Asia yet
Surprisingly it was still imported in surprising quantities nearly 1000 years before it started to be cultivated. Not significant enough quantities for it to be a common staple, but still an interesting tidbit
Actually, in Persian, tomato is literally translated as “western plum”. This is common in our language as we usually say “western” or “foreign” as a prefix to many things that were introduced to Iran (strawberries, sit-style toilets, etc)
Came here to mention Max Miller as well. Amazing work putting together historical context and recipes. Always fun, fascinating, and the recipes are generally very approachable.
I've also made the Babylonian stew from this recipe, and it's rich and hearty. It's easy to see how this would knock the...sandals off of ancient people.
Other ancient recipes...let's just say that humans have very much not held the same tastes over the eons. Some recipes were incongruent or sweet and savory in a strange way, or simply a flex about how many spices you had access to and cold throw in a dish, not about what it really tasted like. YMMV.
I've made this Roman recipe probably a dozen times and everyone who's tried it really likes it [1].
The strange ingredients are garum [2] and asafoetida [3]. The former is just a fish sauce, so that's not hard to substitute, but you have to find asafoetida on the Internet or at an Indian food store.
I can usually find hing (asafoetida) in grocery stores in certain more populous parts of Canada in the spice section, it's quite a good garlic substitute for those who can't do garlic
The Babylonian Collection was left to Yale by J.P. Morgan in 1913. His estate at the time was estimated to be worth about $68.3M ($1.59B in 2024 dollars).
When I read that on his wikipedia page I thought "is that all?" I know I'm probably missing a bunch of other considerations, but geez, the 500th spot on the 2024 Forbes World's Billionaires list was shared by multiple individuals worth approximately $5.8B.
In Australia where lamb is more common than in the US, it'd be pretty easy to keep the fat after roasting a lamb shoulder, or to freeze the fatty offcuts from forequarter chops and render them after I had enough.
Lamb is quite popular down here in Australia. I usually keep some rendered fat from my roasts etc. Sometimes I cook other meats with it and it adds heaps of flavour. I do that with pork fat as well.
if you have a good butcher they might be able to get you some that you can render, but its a hassle. I've done this for beef fat to make some british pie things.
I'm reading Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones' Babylon - The Biography of a Metropolis which just recently came out, and that's how I ended up hearing about Yale's culinary adventures.
The book, btw, is kind of breezy in style and 'he of many LLs in his name' (Lālu-mullālu in Akkadian as suggested by my friendly AI) uses a lot of contemporary pop (nerdy) references to carry the narrative, yet very engaging and am learning a lot about this fabled city (and civilization).
> "Like most premodern cooking manuals, the Babylonian recipes rarely list the quantities of each ingredient, and so basic experimentation is needed to determine viable proportions for the assembly of a dough or the salting of a stew. The “experimental” approach likewise offers answers to questions that can only be addressed through trial and error. For example, many of the identifications of herbs proposed by modern scholars are based mainly on medical compendia, and some of the plants thus identified can produce an extremely bitter or perhaps pungent taste when used in food."
Here's the recipes as literally translated (I used tesseract to OCR):
> "Unwinding. Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. (You add) kurrat, cilantro, salt as desired, leek, garlic. You pound up dried sourdough, you sift (it) and you scatter (it) over the pot before removing it."
> "Stew of lamb. Meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You add fine-grained salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, and milk. [You crush] (and add) leek and garlic."
> "Elamite broth. Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. Dill, kurrat, cilantro, leek, and garlic bound with blood, a corresponding amount of sour milk, and (more) garlic. The (original) name (of this dish) is Zukanda."
> "Tuh’u. Leg meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You sear. You fold in salt, beer, onion, arugula, cilantro, Persian shallot, cumin, and red’ beet, and [you crush] leek and garlic. You sprinkle coriander on top. [You add] kurrat and fresh cilantro."
He basically covers a different historic dish every week ranging from the oldest recorded dishes to cafeteria food from 1990; or what they served on the Titanic, etc.
Honestly the recipe sounds like adding beets to a regular lamb stew recipe. If I havent watch this video and saw the dish, I would think some fancy restaurant is trying to be "innovative"
I mean, this had to be a dish for royalty or something right? How on earth that they have all of those fresh and dried ingredients on hand 4000 years ago.
Most of them seem like a pretty common kitchen garden to me.
And all of the plants are native to that area, or close enough that people who had been farming for a few thousand years at that point would have brought them from neighboring lands to use.
Curious indeed that the Yale Babylonian Collection should, out of all the possible options, choose the cooking of Ancient Babylon. I wonder what we should read into this. I have some theories, but it might be dangerous for me even to mention that I have them.
Cradle of civilization is not an odd culture. Babylon, meaning Gate of God, is one of the more profoundly influential urban civilizational clusters in human history.
Apparently their beets looked the same as ours:
> The kind of beets used in such an ancient recipe should not be different from the beets we use today, even in name. We read in Dictionary of Assyrian Botany (by Campbell Thompson, 1948) that in the ancient Mesopotamian region it was called ‘shumundar,’ it was as red as blood, and has a spinning-top shape (pp. 49, 51).
Intresting. In Hindi/urdu it’s called “chukandar”
If it's any consolation, their lambs were nothing like ours.
This period is early enough that sheep weren't yet sheared.
Oh! So were sheep just for meat back then?
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The recipe is also similar to Hamedh [0], a delicacy in Iraqi and Baghdadi Jewish households. The only major difference is the addition of tomatoes thanks to the Columbian Exchange, and rice - which would have not been cultivated or traded in West Asia yet.
On that note, in Arabic, Farsi, and Hindustani the word for Tomato is essentially shared (tumatar/tamatimu) with the English word "tomato".
But anyhow, a lot of home cooking and traditional meals actually have a pretty long history.
[0] - https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2000/12/12/hamad-iraqi-b...
> rice - which would have not been cultivated or traded in West Asia yet
Surprisingly it was still imported in surprising quantities nearly 1000 years before it started to be cultivated. Not significant enough quantities for it to be a common staple, but still an interesting tidbit
Actually, in Persian, tomato is literally translated as “western plum”. This is common in our language as we usually say “western” or “foreign” as a prefix to many things that were introduced to Iran (strawberries, sit-style toilets, etc)
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In the Levant we use the word بندورا "bindora" in Arabic for tomato.
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Coincidentally this book which has been a labour of love of his creator is going into print this week: https://www.tableofgods.com
It's quite expensive though, but it does look amazing.
Close to a recipe on Tasting History... https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/babylonianlambstew Our current favorite dinner watching along with Alton Brown.
Came here to mention Max Miller as well. Amazing work putting together historical context and recipes. Always fun, fascinating, and the recipes are generally very approachable.
I've also made the Babylonian stew from this recipe, and it's rich and hearty. It's easy to see how this would knock the...sandals off of ancient people.
Other ancient recipes...let's just say that humans have very much not held the same tastes over the eons. Some recipes were incongruent or sweet and savory in a strange way, or simply a flex about how many spices you had access to and cold throw in a dish, not about what it really tasted like. YMMV.
I've made this Roman recipe probably a dozen times and everyone who's tried it really likes it [1].
The strange ingredients are garum [2] and asafoetida [3]. The former is just a fish sauce, so that's not hard to substitute, but you have to find asafoetida on the Internet or at an Indian food store.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LynenQ5h2Y
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida
I can usually find hing (asafoetida) in grocery stores in certain more populous parts of Canada in the spice section, it's quite a good garlic substitute for those who can't do garlic
https://blog.crystalking.com/ancient-roman-food-parthian-chi...
the parthian chicken was stupid easy and tasty
Yep, this is a great shoutout and I'm also a big TH fan. If you haven't yet, check it out!
Yes! Came here to recommend Max. His cookbook is also educational and interesting and some of the recipes are even good! :-)
The Babylonian Collection was left to Yale by J.P. Morgan in 1913. His estate at the time was estimated to be worth about $68.3M ($1.59B in 2024 dollars).
When I read that on his wikipedia page I thought "is that all?" I know I'm probably missing a bunch of other considerations, but geez, the 500th spot on the 2024 Forbes World's Billionaires list was shared by multiple individuals worth approximately $5.8B.
How's the presentation? Just imagining it, it would seem that the meet would have a weird color.
It looks great. When I first saw it, I thought "this color can't be beet"
OMG perfect :-)
good one
Gonna be quite challenging to get "1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat"
In Australia where lamb is more common than in the US, it'd be pretty easy to keep the fat after roasting a lamb shoulder, or to freeze the fatty offcuts from forequarter chops and render them after I had enough.
Lamb is quite popular down here in Australia. I usually keep some rendered fat from my roasts etc. Sometimes I cook other meats with it and it adds heaps of flavour. I do that with pork fat as well.
I was able to get some tail fat from a halal butcher. But never seen lamb fat anywhere else
Easy... Just go to a Trader's Joe, and get a lamb leg and roast it....
if you have a good butcher they might be able to get you some that you can render, but its a hassle. I've done this for beef fat to make some british pie things.
Lamb is usually the red meat of choice, other than pork, almost everywhere besides the US.
You should visit Europe.
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I cant see why.
The source texts are available here, if anyone wants to read the literal translations:
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopota...
I think the taste of their beer would have been much different from what we drink today?
Nutty, aromatic, yeasty, slightly sour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK4DMt8ARyU
They certainly didn't use hops!
I'm reading Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones' Babylon - The Biography of a Metropolis which just recently came out, and that's how I ended up hearing about Yale's culinary adventures.
The book, btw, is kind of breezy in style and 'he of many LLs in his name' (Lālu-mullālu in Akkadian as suggested by my friendly AI) uses a lot of contemporary pop (nerdy) references to carry the narrative, yet very engaging and am learning a lot about this fabled city (and civilization).
It sets certain records straight ...
What's enlightening is how astonishingly little salt is used, by our standards.
The ingredient ratios are the Yale researchers' interpretation—they're not from the source text,
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopota...
> "Like most premodern cooking manuals, the Babylonian recipes rarely list the quantities of each ingredient, and so basic experimentation is needed to determine viable proportions for the assembly of a dough or the salting of a stew. The “experimental” approach likewise offers answers to questions that can only be addressed through trial and error. For example, many of the identifications of herbs proposed by modern scholars are based mainly on medical compendia, and some of the plants thus identified can produce an extremely bitter or perhaps pungent taste when used in food."
Here's the recipes as literally translated (I used tesseract to OCR):
> "Unwinding. Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. (You add) kurrat, cilantro, salt as desired, leek, garlic. You pound up dried sourdough, you sift (it) and you scatter (it) over the pot before removing it."
> "Stew of lamb. Meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You add fine-grained salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, and milk. [You crush] (and add) leek and garlic."
> "Elamite broth. Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. Dill, kurrat, cilantro, leek, and garlic bound with blood, a corresponding amount of sour milk, and (more) garlic. The (original) name (of this dish) is Zukanda."
> "Tuh’u. Leg meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You sear. You fold in salt, beer, onion, arugula, cilantro, Persian shallot, cumin, and red’ beet, and [you crush] leek and garlic. You sprinkle coriander on top. [You add] kurrat and fresh cilantro."
Bears,Beets
Babylon Galactica
If you like this, you may like the "Tasting History" YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@TastingHistory
He basically covers a different historic dish every week ranging from the oldest recorded dishes to cafeteria food from 1990; or what they served on the Titanic, etc.
It's a great channel, and covers history well.
Honestly the recipe sounds like adding beets to a regular lamb stew recipe. If I havent watch this video and saw the dish, I would think some fancy restaurant is trying to be "innovative"
I dislike lamb but the rest sounds great. Maybe I could sub beef.
I mean, this had to be a dish for royalty or something right? How on earth that they have all of those fresh and dried ingredients on hand 4000 years ago.
No, it's common. People today have no idea how truly poor they eat. Modern fast food is essentially fake food paste.
2/3rds of those herbs grow in the garden of my home as just weed (this in Albania), including mint, cilantro, origano and more.
While some have to be cultivated, a lot these herbs just grow as weeds in the Mediterranean area.
Most of them seem like a pretty common kitchen garden to me.
And all of the plants are native to that area, or close enough that people who had been farming for a few thousand years at that point would have brought them from neighboring lands to use.
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Curious indeed that the Yale Babylonian Collection should, out of all the possible options, choose the cooking of Ancient Babylon. I wonder what we should read into this. I have some theories, but it might be dangerous for me even to mention that I have them.
Cradle of civilization is not an odd culture. Babylon, meaning Gate of God, is one of the more profoundly influential urban civilizational clusters in human history.
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