Decoding cryptic ancient recipes

There are old recipes and then there are OLD recipes. It can be difficult enough to suss out what your grandmother meant when she scribbled something down on a 3×5 index card, much less trying to interpret instructions that are nearly 3,000 years old. How do you even approach a task that daunting? You have to become a sleuth, like the interdisciplinary team at Yale University, who are decoding ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform recipes written on tablets.

This culinary anthropology starts with tablets from Yale University’s Babylonian Collection. The goal of the work is “to gain a deeper understanding of [the Mesopotamian] culture through the lens of taste.” The oldest tablet being deciphered dates to around 1730BC, with the newest from about 1,000 years later.

Pia Sorensen, a Harvard University food chemist and Patricia Jurado Gonzalez, a Harvard Science and Cooking Fellow, worked to decode the sparse instructions provided on the tablets. Most recipes were just a few lines long, making the project a challenge to complete. Even though a lot has changed in the ensuing millenia, some things are familiar. “All of the food materials today and 4,000 years ago are the same: a piece of meat is basically a piece of meat. From a physics point of view, the process is the same. There is a science there that is the same today as it was 4,000 years ago,” Jurado Gonzalez said. Learn about the team’s fascinating findings at BBC Travel.