Eat Like The Ancient Babylonians: Researchers Cook Up Nearly 4,000-Year-Old Recipes

NPR ^ | November 16, 2019 | Maria Goody, Scott Simon, and Peter Brewlow

[C19fan]

What did a meal taste like nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylonia? Pretty good, according to a team of international scholars who have deciphered and are re-creating what are considered to be the world's oldest-known culinary recipes.

The recipes were inscribed on ancient Babylonian tablets that researchers have known about since early in the 20th century but that were not properly translated until the end of the century.

[C19fan]

Money quote:

These people are beer people. In fact, lots of the recipes contain beer. The Assyrians would have had wine with the food, I think. The best of the stews we're cooking is a red beet stew, and it has nice sour beer in it.

Wonder what Babylonians would think of Busch beer....

[VicVanleeuwenhoek]

And then “ Walk like an Egyptian.”

[a fool in paradise]

4,000 year-old recipes?

I’d be stuffed after 2 dozen, no doubt.

[painter]

Bump

[Fai Mao]

Yep!
https://youtu.be/Cv6tuzHUuuk

[Big Red Badger]

“Finger Foods”
I’m curious.

[Ancesthntr]

What you have to understand about beer and its importance before the 20th century is that water everywhere and at all times was filthy - drinking water was playing Russian Roulette with your very life. The making of beer kills bacteria. Of course, as a side benefit, it also is somewhat intoxicating, which tends to make an otherwise crappy life seem not so bad.

[Savage Beast]

VILE RACISTS!

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!

[a fool in paradise]

Surely you have heard of the hors d’oeuvres of Babylon before.

[BykrBayb]

Piker 😉

[Rinnwald]

What if you were
Born in Arizona,
Moved to Babylonia?

[Blurb2350]

[Mount Athos]

they didn’t use hops at all back then, i wouldn’t call what they drank beer

[Tax-chick]

"One is a beet stew, one is vegetarian, and the final one has lamb in it," says Barjamovic.

Does Mr. Barjamovic think a beet is an animal?

[Tax-chick]

More like 3,000 years.

[central_va]

Beer without hops, I wonder how it tasted?

[BykrBayb]

Mineral

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Walk like an Egyptian.
Eat like a Babylonian.
Vote like a Philistine (Democrat).

[posterchild]

It would have been nice if the article posted a few of the recipes. I presume they are no longer under any Babylonian copyright.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

Yep boiling the wort kills bacteria, viruses and even fungal ickies. Hops and even before that other herbs have some antiseptic quality so kept the ickies out of the beer.

Unfortunately cirrhosis takes a long time to manifest so there was no evolutionary pressure to breed it out of the human line. Beer for bfast, lunch and dinner and for any drinks in between must have contributed greatly to early death but did not effect the production of successful offspring.