The Oldest Cookbooks in the World

These two clay tablets from the Babylonian Collection, inscribed in Akkadian contain the oldest known cooking recipes. They date to ca. 1750 BC, the time of Hammurabi, known for his famous law code. The cuneiform writing system was complex and generally only scribes who had studied for years could read and write, so it is unlikely that the cookbooks were meant for the ordinary cook or chef. Instead, they were written to document the current practices of culinary art. The recipes are elaborate and often call for rare ingredients. We may assume that they represent Mesopotamian haute cuisine meant for the royal palace or the temple.

From the thousands of tablets recording deliveries and shipments of foodstuff, from vocabulary lists of various kinds of food and from records of payments to workers and soldiers we can get a fairly accurate picture of the standard Mesopotamian diet.

The meats included beef, lamb, goat, pork, deer and fowl - the birds provided both meat and eggs. Fish were eaten along with turtles and shellfish. Various grains, vegetables and fruits such as dates, apples, figs, pomegranates and grapes were integral to the ancient Near Eastern diet. Roots, bulbs, truffles and mushrooms were harvested for the table. Salt added flavor to the food as did a variety of herbs. Honey as well as dates, grape-juice and raisins were used as sweeteners. Milk, clarified butter and fats both animal fats and vegetable oils, such as sesame, linseed and olive oils were used in cooking.

Many kinds of bread are mentioned in the texts from the lowliest barley bread used for workers' rations to elaborate sweetened and spiced cakes baked in fancy, decorated moulds in palace kitchens.

Beer (usually made of fermented barley mush) was the national beverage already in the third millennium BC, while wine grown in northern Mesopotamia was expensive and only enjoyed by the royal household or the very rich.

This tablet includes 25 recipes for stews, 21 are meat stews and 4 are vegetable stews. The recipes list the ingredients and the order in which they should be added, but does not give measures or cooking time - they were clearly meant only for experienced chefs.

YBC 4644 from the Old Babylonian Period, ca. 1750 BC

This tablet has seven recipes which are very detailed. The text is broken in several places and the name of the second recipe is missing, but it is a dish with small birds, maybe partridges:

Remove the head and feet. Open the body and clean the birds, reserving the gizzards and the pluck. Split the gizzards and clean them. Next rinse the birds and flatten them. Prepare a pot and put birds, gizzards and pluck into it before placing it on the fire.

[It does not mention whether fat or water is added -- no doubt the method was so familiar that instructions were considered unnecessary. After the initial boiling or braising, the recipe continues:]


Put the pot back on the fire. Rinse out a pot with fresh water. Place beaten milk into it and place it on the fire. Take the pot (containing the birds) and drain it. Cut off the inedible parts, then salt the rest, and add them to the vessel with the milk, to which you must add some fat. Also add some rue, which has already been stripped and cleaned. When it has come to a boil, add minced leek, garlic, samidu and onion (but not too much onion).

[While the birds cook, preparations for serving the dish must be made]

Rinse crushed grain, then soften it in milk and add to it, as you kneed it, salt, samidu, leeks and garlic along with enough milk and oil so that a soft dough will result which you will expose to the heat of the fire for a moment. Then cut it into two pieces. Take a platter large enough to hold the birds. Place the prepared dough on the bottom of the plate. Be careful that it hangs over the rim of the platter only a little. Place it on top of the oven to cook it. On the dough which has already been seasoned, place the pieces of the birds as well as the gizzards and pluck. Cover it with the bread lid [which has meanwhile been baked] and send it to the table.

YBC 8958 Old Babylonian Period, ca. 1750 BC.