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dvh 12 hours ago [-]
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).
thaumasiotes 8 hours ago [-]
If it's any consolation, their lambs were nothing like ours.
This period is early enough that sheep weren't yet sheared.
fsloth 2 hours ago [-]
Oh! So were sheep just for meat back then?
eru 9 minutes ago [-]
Maybe also for leather?
And in nature sheep drop their coats without shearing.
alephnerd 12 hours ago [-]
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
amir_karbasi 9 hours ago [-]
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)
eru 7 minutes ago [-]
Austrians call tomatoes Paradeiser, from an older word for Paradise.
xattt 6 hours ago [-]
As an aside, tomatoes are golden apples (pomodoro), and oranges are Chinese apples (Apfelsin) in some languages.
A lot of cultures appear to name botanicals using apples or, in GP’s context, stone fruit as “reference” points.
vladgur 25 minutes ago [-]
Wow, апельсин - apelsin(Russian) makes total sense now
snthpy 1 hours ago [-]
Thank you for this. Knowing both those words, i could never work out the original/history of the terms.
fsckboy 1 hours ago [-]
>A lot of cultures appear to name botanicals using apples
don't know if it makes the point or upends it, but the fruit in the Garden of Eden wasn't specifically an apple.
thrdbndndn 6 hours ago [-]
Chinese does the same thing, using prefixes like 西 (western), 番 (foreign), and 洋 (foreign) for introduced items.
For tomatoes, interestingly, it has two common names that follow this pattern: 西紅柿, literally translated as "Western Red Persimmon", and 番茄, literally translated as "Foreign Eggplant".
Other produce examples include 番薯 (Foreign Yam) for sweet potato, 西瓜 (Western Melon) for watermelon, 洋蔥 (Foreign Onion) for bulb onion etc.
dotancohen 5 hours ago [-]
The recorded English-language etymology for "ketchup" suggests that the word comes from one of the Chinese dialect's word for tomato. Do you have any idea which Chinese word sounds like ketchup?
thelibrarian 23 minutes ago [-]
My personal theory based on nothing more than the vibe of the thing is that it comes from the Malay/Indonesian word ‘kecap’ (which is pronounced almost identically to “ketchup”), the word for sweet soy sauce. This is soy sauce that is thickened and sweetened with palm sugar, and I could see European cooks attempting to replicate it based on the vague descriptions given by sailors, and ending up with ketchup.
Interesting, in various European languages those tend to be "Turkish": turkey hens (the bird called turkey now), Turkish corn (maize), Turkish beans (long beans).
Again, trade routes.
selcuka 2 hours ago [-]
> Turkish corn (maize)
And in Turkish maize is called "Mısır", which comes from the country name Egypt (which is also Mısır in Turkish).
When Arabs conquered Egypt, they called it "Mishr" (مصر) which literally translates to "country" or "borderland". Maize was originally imported from the Americas, but because the trade route was through Egypt, Turkish people initially called it Egypt Wheat or Egypt Millet. In time, it is started to be called only Mısır/Egypt.
idontwantthis 7 hours ago [-]
In Panama they say Chino for foreign versions and in Cambodia they say barang which literally means Frankish (via farang from Thailand).
oldandboring 8 hours ago [-]
> maize
Which, in turn, originated in Mexico and didn't make its way to Europe until the 1500s.
alephnerd 8 hours ago [-]
Appreciate the clarification!
amir_karbasi 8 hours ago [-]
My pleasure! I also find languages very interesting and have had the opportunity to grow up in a bilingual home and learn French and German.
One more fun fact is that potato is a direct translation of the French “Pomme de terre” (“sib zamani” or “ground apple”).
Back to the actual topic, this is a recipe that’s definitely worth trying. Persian shallots are actually more garlicky than oniony. A great addition to lamb dishes and yogurt.
dotancohen 5 hours ago [-]
Thank you! In Hebrew we literally call the potato תפוח אדמה which is "ground apple". Now I know where the idea comes from.
abtinf 3 hours ago [-]
It is not a “clarification”. You are wrong and are spreading misinformation. In Farsi, the word for tomato is gojeh farangi.
dotancohen 5 hours ago [-]
> On that note, in Arabic, Farsi, and Hindustani the word for Tomato is essentially shared (tumatar/tamatimu) with the English word "tomato".
In the Levant we use the word بندورا "bindora" in Arabic for tomato.
alephnerd 5 hours ago [-]
Huh. Like Pomodoro. That makes sense.
IgorPartola 3 hours ago [-]
In Russian we use tomat and pomidor interchangeably.
jamal-kumar 2 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile English speakers joke about disagreements over the pronunciation of tomato
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
Yep, this is a great shoutout and I'm also a big TH fan. If you haven't yet, check it out!
greatquux 7 hours ago [-]
Yes! Came here to recommend Max. His cookbook is also educational and interesting and some of the recipes are even good! :-)
harel 6 hours ago [-]
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.
comrade1234 11 hours ago [-]
How's the presentation? Just imagining it, it would seem that the meet would have a weird color.
debo_ 11 hours ago [-]
It looks great. When I first saw it, I thought "this color can't be beet"
LastTrain 4 hours ago [-]
OMG perfect :-)
_continuation 5 hours ago [-]
good one
cantalopes 7 hours ago [-]
Gonna be quite challenging to get "1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat"
strken 7 hours ago [-]
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.
jp0d 7 hours ago [-]
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.
mermadicsolutio 6 hours ago [-]
I was able to get some tail fat from a halal butcher. But never seen lamb fat anywhere else
ardit33 1 hours ago [-]
Easy... Just go to a Trader's Joe, and get a lamb leg and roast it....
s0rce 7 hours ago [-]
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.
dyauspitr 5 hours ago [-]
Lamb is usually the red meat of choice, other than pork, almost everywhere besides the US.
hulitu 2 hours ago [-]
You should visit Europe.
badc0ffee 26 minutes ago [-]
Or Japan, or Canada, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Chile, or...
protocolture 3 hours ago [-]
I cant see why.
peri-cl 5 hours ago [-]
The source texts are available here, if anyone wants to read the literal translations:
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 ...
lorenzohess 1 hours ago [-]
Bears,Beets
culi 39 minutes ago [-]
Babylon Galactica
PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago [-]
What's enlightening is how astonishingly little salt is used, by our standards.
peri-cl 6 hours ago [-]
The ingredient ratios are the Yale researchers' interpretation—they're not from the source text,
> "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.
It's a great channel, and covers history well.
mermadicsolutio 6 hours ago [-]
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"
analog8374 11 hours ago [-]
I dislike lamb but the rest sounds great. Maybe I could sub beef.
dyauspitr 5 hours ago [-]
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.
tensor 3 hours ago [-]
No, it's common. People today have no idea how truly poor they eat. Modern fast food is essentially fake food paste.
ardit33 1 hours ago [-]
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.
sophacles 4 hours 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.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
tom_ 12 hours ago [-]
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.
yubblegum 3 days ago [-]
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.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
ahazred8ta 3 days ago [-]
To an archeologist, 'civilization' refers to builders of walled cities inhabited by non-farmers with complex social sructure, division of labor, and usually some form of taxation. Highly moral hunter gatherers living in mud huts are not a 'civilization' in this context. Now you know.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
krapp 3 days ago [-]
The vast majority of Africans aren't hunter-gatherers living in mud huts. They have actual cities with highways and skyscrapers and everything.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
I'm not arguing for what is a majority. I'm talking about the large portions of Africa that still live in a hunter-gatherer situations in mud huts.
ahazred8ta 3 days ago [-]
Villages in New Guinea, the Amazon, etc, the word you're looking for is 'cultures'.
The reason we're talking about the recipe is because it's one of the oldest recorded recipes, which is because they had writing.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
>'cultures'.
That's interesting, because I don't really think of a "culture" as smaller than a "civilization". I think of a culture being a necessary thread that runs through a civilization and without which there are no civilizations.
TFNA 9 hours ago [-]
Traveling overland across Africa will swiftly disabuse you of the notion that hunter/gatherer lifestyles make up any "large portion" of the continent's population. It would hardly even be feasible in the face of massive deforestation and population boom.
krapp 3 days ago [-]
Africa comprises an entire continent. There are not large portions of it (or "large swaths") where people still live as hunter-gatherers living in mud huts, for any reasonable definition of "large portion."
jfjdkdkdkd 13 hours ago [-]
its sad that your ideology allows you to tell lies without an oz of shame.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
> for any reasonable definition of "large portion."
I'm sure those relatively voiceless cultures will appreciate your minimization of their contribution to the peoples of Africa.
krapp 3 days ago [-]
You're the one who was claiming most Africans were hut-dwelling hunter-gatherers earlier. I'm not the one minimizing anything or anyone, just stop it.
thataccount 3 days ago [-]
Uh, what? I'm not sure where you are pulling that accusation from. I said very succinctly that I was not talking about what was the majority in Africa. I think you are confused.
> 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).
This period is early enough that sheep weren't yet sheared.
And in nature sheep drop their coats without shearing.
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...
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
A lot of cultures appear to name botanicals using apples or, in GP’s context, stone fruit as “reference” points.
don't know if it makes the point or upends it, but the fruit in the Garden of Eden wasn't specifically an apple.
For tomatoes, interestingly, it has two common names that follow this pattern: 西紅柿, literally translated as "Western Red Persimmon", and 番茄, literally translated as "Foreign Eggplant".
Other produce examples include 番薯 (Foreign Yam) for sweet potato, 西瓜 (Western Melon) for watermelon, 洋蔥 (Foreign Onion) for bulb onion etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Etymology
Again, trade routes.
And in Turkish maize is called "Mısır", which comes from the country name Egypt (which is also Mısır in Turkish).
When Arabs conquered Egypt, they called it "Mishr" (مصر) which literally translates to "country" or "borderland". Maize was originally imported from the Americas, but because the trade route was through Egypt, Turkish people initially called it Egypt Wheat or Egypt Millet. In time, it is started to be called only Mısır/Egypt.
Which, in turn, originated in Mexico and didn't make its way to Europe until the 1500s.
One more fun fact is that potato is a direct translation of the French “Pomme de terre” (“sib zamani” or “ground apple”).
Back to the actual topic, this is a recipe that’s definitely worth trying. Persian shallots are actually more garlicky than oniony. A great addition to lamb dishes and yogurt.
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
the parthian chicken was stupid easy and tasty
It's quite expensive though, but it does look amazing.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ancient-mesopota...
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 ...
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."
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.
While some have to be cultivated, a lot these herbs just grow as weeds in the Mediterranean area.
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.
Cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Pottery_culture & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
Civilizations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Great_Zimbabwe & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs
The reason we're talking about the recipe is because it's one of the oldest recorded recipes, which is because they had writing.
That's interesting, because I don't really think of a "culture" as smaller than a "civilization". I think of a culture being a necessary thread that runs through a civilization and without which there are no civilizations.
I'm sure those relatively voiceless cultures will appreciate your minimization of their contribution to the peoples of Africa.