Of Cookbooks and Recipes

Ancient cookbooks discovered

In wrapping up this series on food and cooking, I thought I’d share a couple of bits of trivia. In The Woman’s Study Bible, under the topic, “Cooking: What’s for Supper?” there is an interesting note about what is perhaps the world’s oldest cookbook. It consists of three clay tablets dating back about 4000 years. Following is one of the recipes:

“Take some meat. Prepare water; throw fat into it, then add leek and garlic, all crushed together, and some shuhutinnu [probably onion].”

The note continues that one tablet “has twenty-five recipes, including four vegetable dishes and twenty-one meat dishes (featuring deer, gazelle, lamb, pigeon, and wild dove).”

You might find the following links about ancient cookbooks and recipes interesting:

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-050208-story,0,7456100.story

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-23/food/fo-8362_1_ancient-recipes

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Have you tried….?

If your family is bored with your menus lately, perhaps you could suggest locusts, a food quite familiar in New Testament times. Joseph L. Gift, in his Life and Customs in Jesus’ Time, includes the following citation originally written in 1895 by Edmund Strapfer:

Desert locusts feeding. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Lunch on the wing

“Four kinds of locusts were edible. …We learn from the Arabs of our day how locusts are dressed for food. Sometimes they are simply roasted and eaten with a little water and salt….But usually, the preparation was more elaborate. After killing the locusts, they were dried in the sun; the head and claws were taken off and the body ground to a powder, either by a mill or in a mortar. Flour was mixed with this powder, and it was made into a sort of bread slightly bitter; camel’s milk or honey was added to correct this’” (page 21).

Locusts are commonly eaten in some parts of the world today.