Clearing the Table

Anyone who has looked at premodern recipes knows how foreign they seem. For instance, our only true “cookbook” from the ancient Near East is the Yale Culinary Tablets, a collection of mostly meat dishes written in Akkadian. They include recipes like the following stew:

Elamite broth. Meat is used. Prepare water; add fat, dill (?), šuḫutinnû [an allium], coriander (?), leek and garlic bound with blood, a corresponding amount of kisimmu [soured milk], and more garlic. The original name of this dish is Zukanda. ¹

To the modern cook, this recipe contains many obstacles: What sort of meat, and how much, is used? Which modern onion most closely resembles Mesopotamian šuḫutinnû? Where does one obtain fresh blood these days? Should the ingredients be seared or otherwise cooked before boiling? Educated guesses can answer some of these questions, but not all. What made perfect sense to the author of this ancient text is a cipher to us today.