Encyclopedia of Food & Culture
from http://www.enotes.com/food-encyclopedia/mesopotamia-ancient

MESOPOTAMIA, ANCIENT. Cuneiform clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, the region between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers (mostly present-day Iraq), preserve a few kitchen recipes dating from the eighteenth to the seventeenth centuries B.C.E. Except for these texts, the oldest recipes known, our information about food supplies and their processing is indirect: on the one hand, dictionarylike lists of foodstuffs and, on the other, administrative texts recording the acquisition and expenditures of raw staples and kitchen supplies. A few proverbs and literary passages occasionally give additional details. Although an enormous number of names of edible plants, animals, condiments, and the like is known, in too many cases their exact identification is not possible. In contrast with Egypt, food remains of ancient Mesopotamia, other than bones and seeds, are extremely rare (Ellison et al.). In Mesopotamia, cooking was considered to mark, alongside clothing, the beginning of civilization. To quote an ancient Sumerian poem ("The Debate between the Ewe and the Barley," Alster and Vanstiphout) describing prehistoric times:

The men of those remote days
did not have bread to eat,
did not have clothes to wear.
People went around with naked limbs,
ate grass with their mouths, like sheep,
drank water from the gullies.
The onset of historical time is metonymically described as "when bread was eaten in the shrines of the land, when the ovens of the light were burning" ("Gilgamesh and Enkidu," George).

Lexical Information

Extensive word lists covering the botany, zoology, and material culture of southern Mesopotamia are a typical element of cuneiform literature. Among the oldest intelligible tablets (c. 2900 B.C.E.) there are lists of cereal and dry meat products, vegetables and alliaceous plants (onions and other plants in the allium family), fish, and birds. These lists were expanded through the centuries, culminating after the fourteenth century B.C.E. in long classical lists that were in use until the second century B.C.E. In an encyclopedic compilation of twenty-four tablets, of an average length of three hundred lines each, there is one dedicated to domestic animals (XIIIth tablet), one to wild ones (XIV), one to meat cuts (XV), one to plants (XVII), one to birds and fish (XVIII), and two to foods and drink in general (XXIII–XXIV).

In detail, Tablet XXIII has three long sections:

1. soups
2. beer and brewery products
3. flours and bread

Tablet XXIV is more varied:

1. syrups and honey (12 entries)
2. oils and fats (53)
3. spices (11, also treated elsewhere in other tablets)
4. seeds (12, also treated elsewhere)
5. dairy products (34)
6. pulses (8)
7. emmer and wheat (10)
8. barley (67)
9. straws (10)
10. fruits: figs, raisins, pomegranates (10), dates (at least 38).
11. salt and condiments (12)
12. melons and cucumbers (8)

These lists are Sumero-Akkadian bilinguals (Mesopotamian culture was bilingual from its earliest days). Sumerian is an isolated language, but Akkadian is Semitic, a sister language of Hebrew and Arabic, and thus it is helpful in the identification of some food names, although too many uncertainties still remain. For instance, the names of the two condiments more often mentioned, after salt, in the texts of the end of the third millennium, are gazi and zahili. Neither of them is unambiguously identified.

Accounting

A meticulous and detailed accounting system is another typical feature of Mesopotamian civilization. Administrative tablets, found by the tens of thousands, give a general idea of the circulation of goods, of supplies, their origin, and their destination. A substantial number of these tablets deal with alimentation. Thus, for instance, an archive of c. 2400 B.C.E. from the town of Girsu gives us detailed information about the teams of fishermen, their catch classified by species, the amounts regularly provided to the governor's palace, and so on. By their nature, these accounts give better information about the tables of the upper classses, and very little about the diet of the working population. What is known about the latter comes from payment sheets that show that a workman would get about six liters of barley for a hard day's work. Women and children were given less.

Cereal Products

Locally grown cereals, mostly barley and relatively small amounts of emmer wheat and wheat, constituted the nutritional base in ancient Mesopotamia. Cereals were consumed in the form of bread, soups, and beer.

Bread

Bread (Sumerian, ninda; Akkadian, akalu) must have been made, at least in some cases, from leavened dough. There are no direct descriptions, but allusions to its bulky size and to leaving the dough overnight to rest seem to be indications of fermentation. One may assume, however, that in most cases the bread was made from unleavened dough shaped into flat, round loaves, similar to the present-day Near Eastern khubuz. This bread was baked in a peculiar, ubiquitous type of oven called an öurin (Sumerian) or tinûru (Akkadian). It was a clay implement of cylindrical shape, tapering to a conical form in its upper part and with a side opening at its base. The whole was between 3 and 4 feet high. Once the oven was sufficiently heated, the flat, unleavened loaves were plastered to the side for baking. Salaries of the workers were often paid in bread. Roasted barley was sold in the streets and at the marketplace.

Four varieties of 'bread' were distinguished, of which the commonest was an unleavened bread in the form of thin crisp disks made from whole-meal barley flour. Another type was specifically described as 'leavened bread', whilst the others were probably what we should refer to as pastries, since they contained such ingredients as sesame oil and 'honey'. The same Akkadian word sometimes means honey from wild bees and sometimes date-syrup.

Alcoholic drinks

The Mesopotamian brewing process is relatively well known: the fermentation of a mixture of malt and barley bread, with the addition of sugar in the form of dates, produced different types of beer (Sumerian, kaö; Akkadian, öikaru) consumed by drinking with a straw from a communal jar. This beer had a short shelf life due to a certain instability caused, among other factors, by the absence of hops. Only in later periods, after the seventh century B.C.E., are there indications of the addition of an element, perhaps cuscuta, with a function similar to hops.

Lists of supplies to brewers give the relative amounts of ingredients for various types of beer, but the absence of any indications about the processing does not allow any evaluation of the final product. The same ingredients can result in products of quite different taste and aspect, depending on the processing. A fermented beverage made of dates was also known. Chemical residues have identified some jars as wine containers in the late Uruk period, c. 3500 B.C.E. (Badler et al.). Wine, nevertheless, is mentioned rarely, and although there were some vineyards in the south, in the Lagash area and in the eastern hills toward Iran at the end of the third millennium, the climatic conditions were in general unfavorable for growing vines. The conditions were better in the north, in the hilly regions of Assyria. Some wine may have been imported from the northwest in Syria where the conditions were better. Consumption of alcoholic drinks, beer above all, seems to have been substantial. The rations given to the royal couriers and travelers consist always of bread and beer. There are lists of supplies for festive occasions, and drinking parties (kaö-dé-a, literally, "the pouring of beer") are mentioned. These parties—one could perhaps call them "receptions"—were celebrated for religious, social, or political reasons such as the visit of foreign ambassadors, often with the presence of the king and his court.

Animal Products

Meat, from sheep, goats, and cattle, seems to have been consumed regularly by the upper classes, only occasionally by the rest (Limet). Salted, dried strips of meat are mentioned already in the oldest texts. The use of meat must have been more extensive than sparse mentions in texts seem to suggest. The consumption of pork, initially frequent, seems to have declined after the beginning of the second millennium. The extreme south of Mesopotamia was an immense estuary with lagoons and marshes where fowl and fish were present in huge quantities. Fish is better documented for the older periods up to 3000 B.C.E. Whether the subsequent decline in fish consumption is real, for reasons of taste or availability, or apparent, due to administrative changes, is hard to say. Semitic populations seem to have held fish in low esteem. Fats for cooking were predominantly of animal origin (lard, tallow, suet); vegetable oils, presumably from sesame, were reserved mostly for cosmetic, ritual, and technical (tanning hides, cloth finishing, etc.) uses. For example, the total production of vegetable oil in the Girsu province in 2047 B.C.E. was some 14,445 liters, but none of it was earmarked for cooking. Dairy products, including clarified butter and various types of cheeses, were very important, but there are no indications about the consumption of fresh milk by adults; its preservation must have been severely limited by climatic conditions. Dairy fats were the only ones used in the confection of pastries. Hunting (enormous flocks of gazelles roamed the desert until a few centuries ago) is often described in royal commemorative texts but has left no trace in bureaucratic records and must have been a sport (lions and boars being a favorite prey) rather than a means to procure subsistence. As for more exotic foods, an Assyrian relief shows a servant carrying locusts impaled on long sticks.

Vegetables and Fruits

If close to a hundred names of green vegetables, as well as their parts and varieties, are known (from Tablet XVII of the compilation listed above), their use is poorly documented, due probably to their perishability, which made them unsuitable to be recorded by the bureaucratic administration. An exception are the alliaceous plants (onions, garlic, leeks), which are less perishable, and evidently much esteemed and consumed in large amounts by all levels of the population. There are detailed accounts of the production of onion beds. Lettuce was particularly appreciated, judging from its mention in literary texts. The names of many spices are known but, as usual, their identification is extremely difficult. The fruits more frequently mentioned are apples, figs, and pomegranates; the first two were often dried, and a ring of dried apples from the royal tombs of Ur (c. 2700 B.C.E.) has been exceptionally preserved (Ellison et al.).

The date palm occupied a place apart. It grew easily in extensive gardens on the southern plain and the tree production was the object of careful bookkeeping. Besides the fruit, which was eaten dried and was a source of a fermented drink, most parts of the palm were useful for making ropes, baskets, and ceiling beams. Date syrup seems to have been the main sweetener; beekeeping is not documented until very late times, and whenever the texts mention "honey," it must be generally assumed that it refers to date syrup. There are isolated allusions to mushrooms, but their consumption seems to have been considered a barbaric custom: the stereotyped ethnic description of the Bedouin nomads has them digging for truffles. Present-day Bedouins are still very fond of the white truffle (Tarfezia leonis) and of a smaller red-brown one, growing in the desert after rain from February to April.

Religious and Social Uses of Food

The sacrifice of cattle and smaller animals was an essential part of many religious rites, generally accompanied by bread, pastry, and beer libations. The only food taboo mentioned is the abstinence from fish and leeks by some type of priests (and by some evil spirits). Banquets and dining halls, but with very vague information about the dishes served in them, are mentioned in the mythological and historical texts. Meat dishes (lamb mostly, rarely beef) and beer are invariably included in the menu.

In 879 B.C.E., the Assyrian king Assurnasirapli II boasts, on an inscription on a stele (Grayson, pp. 288–293), of having given a gigantic banquet, on the occasion of the inauguration of his new palace, for no fewer than 69,574 guests, from workers to dignitaries, local and foreign. The supplies for this banquet give an idea of the requirements of the Assyrian gourmet, leaving aside the question of the historical precision of the round numbers: 1,000 oxen, 1,000 calves, 14,000 sheep, 1,000 lambs, 500 deers, 500 gazelles, 1,000 large birds, 500 geese, 500 cranes, 1,000 mesukku-birds, 1,000 qaribu-birds, 10,000 pigeons, 10,000 turtle doves, 10,000 smaller birds, 10,000 fish, 10,000 akbiru (a small rodent), 10,000 eggs, 10,000 containers of beer, 10,000 goatskins of wine, 10,000 jars of a hot condiment, 1,000 boxes of fresh vegetables, and large quantities of honey, pistachios, roasted grain, pomegranates, dates, cheeses, olives, and all kinds of spices. These are the highlights of a list thirty-six lines long on the stele.

Kitchens and Utensils

Professional cooks (Sumerian, muhaldim; Akkadian, nuhatimmu), assigned to palaces, temples, and other institutions, are known from remote antiquity. The common name for the kitchen was "the cooks' house," or "the cooks' room." The most frequent type of bread oven, often encountered in the ruins, has already been described above. The names of larger ovens, called udun and kir, are also known, but their physical features are difficult to ascertain. Although remains of large ovens and fireplaces of various types have been found in archeological excavations, there is no comprehensive study so far of their characteristics. Cooking and serving utensils, from large kettles to soup bowls, are known by name, but it is not easy to assign these names to the various types of clay and metal containers recovered by the archaeologists.

Recipes

There was a tradition according to which the kitchen recipes came from Enki, the god of wisdom and knowledge. Thus, one reads in a literary text: "King (?)ulgi will have a banquet in his pleasant palace after large beautiful dates mixed with raisins, butter from the holy sheep-fold, and the sweetest (date) honey have been worked together, and the sweets have been mixed with fine flour, according to the good instructions of god Enki" (unpublished translation). This passage describes the preparation of a very traditional type of cake (Sumerian, ninda-ìdé-a; Akkadian, mirsu). The administrative "shopping lists" give at times the ingredients for a given dish or confection. From them one can infer that this cake required, for instance, the following proportion of ingredients: fine flour: three cups; clarified butter: one-fourth cup; dates: one cup. Small amounts of cheese or raisins were occasionally added. This of course is not really a recipe; it tells what, but not how.

RECIPES FROM ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA

Genuine cooking recipes, written about 1700 B.C.E., have been preserved on three cuneiform tablets in the collections of Yale University and are available in a professional edition and commentary by Jean Bottéro. One of them gives instructions to prepare "twenty-one meat soups and four vegetable ones" in a rather concise style. The other two are much more detailed, but the text is less well preserved. They are almost completely devoted to the preparation of fowl dishes. It is quite possible that these cuneiform tablets are survivors of a large collection of culinary works. The style of cooking described represents probably the activities of the cooks of some royal court, perhaps from the later part of the Larsa Dynasty (ended 1763 B.C.E.) since it appears from older texts that birds were a favorite dish at the queen's table. The interpretation of these recipes is hampered by the usual uncertainties in the identification of the spices and other ingredients, as well as in the meaning of some highly technical terms. Follow the translations of the recipes (adapted from Bottéro, 1995) for a simple soup and for a complicated dish of wild pigeon (additional comments in square brackets):

1.To prepare goat's kid soup. Singe the head, legs, and tail [the parts of the animal to be used], the meat will be ready. Prepare the water, add fat, onions, samîdu [a type of flour preparation, or a spice], leeks, and garlic bound with blood, crushed kisimmu [a type of cheese or coagulated milk], and an adequate amount of wild onion [Allium desertorum].

The addition of blood (of what animal is not specified, the kid's presumably here) as a binding and flavoring agent is frequent in these recipes. Amounts and cooking times are left to the experience of the cook.

Translation from http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/life_a.pdf:

Stew of a Kid {Baby Goat}
Head, legs, and tail should be singed before putting {them in} the pot to boil.
Bring water to a boil. Add fat, onions, samidu, leeks, garlic, some blood {from the goat}, some fresh cheese.
Beat the whole together.

2.To prepare wild pigeons (amursânu) in broth. Slaughter the wild pigeon and, after soaking it in hot water, pluck it. Once plucked, wash it with cold water and skin the neck, leaving attached to the body the skin with its meat. Cut out the ribs. Open the underbelly and remove the gizzard. Wash and soak the bird in cold water. Open and peel the membrane from the gizzard. Cut open and chop the intestines. To cook in broth, first put in a kettle the gizzard, intestines, and head, as well as a piece of mutton [fat], and cook it. Remove from the fire. Wash well [the bird] with cold water and wipe carefully. Sprinkle with salt and assemble all the ingredients. Prepare the broth, adding a piece of fat from which the gristle has been removed, some vinegar, samîdu flour, leek and garlic, mashed with onion, and if needed add some water. Let simmer. When it is cooked, pound and mash together leek, garlic, andahöu [a kind of onion], and kisimmu to add to the dish [follows a damaged passage in which apparently the pigeon is disjointed and the legs are covered with dough]. When everything is cooked, remove the meat from the fire, and before the broth cools, serve it accompanied with garlic, greens, and vinegar. Carve and serve. The broth can be consumed later by itself.

The kind of wild pigeon of this recipe is known to have been regularly supplied centuries earlier to the royal kitchens for its consumption by the queen and ladies of the court. These recipes also include instructions to make a sort of bread to accompany the fowl dishes. It was made of sifted sasku flour, a sort of semolina, mixed with milk and condimented with siqqu, a salty paste made from fish and crustaceans, akin to the garum of the Romans. It was kneaded "being careful that it remains pliant," and condimented with leek and garlic. Part was formed to line the bottom of the serving plate, and part to make small loaves (sebetu). It was left to rise, and then baked on the bread oven already described.

These are at present the oldest known recipes. Nothing has survived from the following centuries, except for a short isolated recipe written in a small tablet probably from the fifth or fourth centuries B.C.E. It describes the preparation of a spiced liquid in which to cook meat:

The right amount of roasted nuhurtu, roasted [seeds of] mustard(?), roasted cuscuta, and roasted cumin. Boil slowly with [dried] cucumber in 6 quarts of water until it is reduced to 1 quart. Filter it. Kill the animal [to be cooked] and throw it [in the liquid].

This is a general-purpose cooking liquid for meat. The recipe illustrates once more the problems raised by the difficulties in identifying the ingredients.

Bread Recipe from Translation from http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/life_a.pdf:

Here is a recipe for Ancient-Style Bread.
Ingredients:
14 oz. flour
1 cup of water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Mix the water, flour, and salt together slowly. Then knead the dough and form it
into flat round patties.
Cover the dough with a cloth and let it sit overnight. The next day, bake it in
an oven at 350°F for 30 minutes. For an authentic Mesopotamian experience,
eat the bread with a raw onion!

From the Foodtimeline

 

Ancient Mesopotamian foods

There are several sources you can use to find information on the foods, agricultural practices, and dining customs of ancient Mesopotamia. Most of this information (the credible sources your teacher will accept) is still contained in books. Did you know Ancient Mesopotamia is also credited for the first written recipes?

Some notes to get you started:

"The raw materials of the Sumerian diet...were barley, wheat and millet; chick peas, lentils and beans; onions, garlic and leeks; cucumbers, cress, mustard and fresh green lettuce. By the time Sumer was succeeded by Babylon a special delicacy had been discovered that was dispatched to the royal palace by the basketful. Truffles. Everyday meals probably consisted of barley paste or barleycake, accompanied by onions or a handful of beans and washed down with barley ale, but the fish that swarmed in the rivers of Mesopotamia were a not-too-rare luxury. Over fifty different types are mentioned in texts dating before 2300 BC, and although the number of types had diminished in Babylonian times, the fried-fish vendors still did a thriving trade in the narrow, winding streets of Ur. Onions, cucumbers, freshly grilled goat, mutton and pork (not yet taboo in the Near East) were to be had from other food stalls. Meat was commoner in the cities than in the more sparsley populated countryside, since it spoiled so quickly in the heat, but beef and veal were everywhere popular with people who could afford them...although most beef is likely to have been tough and stringy. Cattle were not usually slaughtered until the end of their working lives...Probably tenderer and certainly more common was mutton. The incomers who had first put the Sumerian state on its feet were originally sheep herders..."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers:New York] 1988 (p. 47)
[NOTE: This book has much more information than can be transcribed here. Your librarian can help you find a copy.]

"Mesopotamian food is known from archaeology and written records on cuneiform tablets, including bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian word lists. These sources indicate the importance of barley bread, of which many kinds are named, and barley and wheat cakes, and grain and legume soups; of onions, leeks and garlic; of vegetables including chate melon, and of fruits including apple, fig and grape; of honey and cheese; of several culinary herbs; and of butter and vegetable oil. Sumerians drank beer often, wine seldom if at all; wine was better known in northern Mesopotamia and in later items. Animal foods included pork, mutton, beef, fowl including ducks and pigeons, and many kinds of fish. Meats were salted; fruits were conserved in honey; various foods, including apples, were dried. A kind of fermented cause is identified in Akkadian texts."
---Food in the Ancient World From A-Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p. 216)

"Gardens in fertile Mesopotamia flourished, and onions and leeks and garlic were amongst the most frequently cultivated plants. They were grown in the gardens of King Merodach Maladan II of Babylon, and Ur-Nammu of Ur (2100 BC) records that by constructing a temple to Nannar he saved his garden, wherein grew onions and leeks...The cucumber was much cultivated in Egypt in Pliny's day and known in early Mesopotamia far earlier, being recorded as growing in the garden of Ur-Nammu at Ur."
---Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Peoples, Don Brothwell and Patricia Brothwell [Johns Hopkins University Press:Baltimore] expanded edition 1998 (p. 109, 124)

"The staple crop of ancient farmers around the world was always grain...In Mesopotamia, the chief crop was barley. Rice and corn were unknown, and wheat flourished on a soil less saline than exists in most of Mesopotamia. Thus barley, and the bread baked from its flour, became the staff of life. Mesopotamian bread was ordinarilly coarse, flat, and unleavened, but a more expensive bread could be baked from finer flour. Pieces of just such a bread were...found in the tomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, stored there to provide her spirit with sustenence in the afterlife. Bread could also be enriched with animal and vegetable fat; milk, butter, and cheese; fruit and fruit juice; and sesame seeds....The gardens of Mesopotamia, watered by irrigation canals, were lush with fruits and vegetables...Among the fruits were apples, apricots, cherries, figs, melons, mulberries, pears, plums, pomegranats, and quinces. The most important fruit crop, especially in southern Mesopotamia, was the date. Rich in sugar and iron, dates were easily preserved. Like barley, the date-palm thrived on relatively saline soil and was one of the first plants farmers domesticated...As for vegetables, the onion was king, along with its cousin, garlic. Other vegetables included lettuce, cabbage, and cucumbers; carrots and radishes; beets and turnips; and a variety of legumes, including beans, peas, and chickpeas...Curiously, two mainstays of the Mediterranean diet--olives and grapes...were seldom found in Mesopotamian cuisine...to appreciate Mesopotamian daily life our imagination must breath in the pungent aroma of the seasonings that once rose from ancient stoves and filled the air...Coriander, cress, and sumin; fennel, fenugrek, and leek; marjoram, mint, and mustard; rosemary and rue; saffrom and thyme...Cumin...Sheep played an important role in the Mesopotamian economy...Like goats and cows, ewes produced milk that was converted into butter and cheese, but sheep were also slaughtered for meat. Beef was in short supply...pork from pigs [suppelmentd]...Game birds, deer, and gazelle were hunted as well. On farms, domesticated geese and ducks supplied eggs...and from canals and private ponds, came some 50 types of fish, a staple of the Mesopotamian diet. Generally, meats were either dried, smoked, or salted for safekeeping, or they were cooked by roasting, boiling, broiling, or barbecuing."
---Handbook of Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Stephen Bertman [Facts on File:New York NY] 2003 (p. 291-293)

RECOMMENDED READING

WEB SITES
Sumeria, Babylonia, Judea, Purdue University lecture notes
Babylonia, Catholic Encyclopedia
About Mesopotmia banquets (with picture)

ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN RECIPES
Food historians trace the earliest written recipes to the second milennium BC. However, it was many centuries afterward that usable recipes (lists of ingredients, really, no cooking times and measurements like we have today) were transcribed for posterity. This means what we know about the foods of Mesopotamia are educated guesses based on scientific archaeological and biological evidence. Notes here:

"Mesopotamian recipe collections, three cuneiform tablets at Yale University containing recipes in Akkadian. Probably originating from southern Mesopotamia in the seventeenth century BC, these are the oldest known food recipes anywhere in the world."
---Food in the Ancient World From A-Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p. 217)

"The earliest known recipes date from Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE. It would be rash, however, to conclude that the Mesopotamians invented cooking. They simply had reasons to write down their recipes and were the first, along with the Egyptians, to possess the means to do so; without writing, recipes cannot survive. Yet the absence of written recipes does not rule out an interest in gastronomic matters of the existence of sophisticated culinary techniquees. For example, the ancient Egyptians apparently felt no need to write down their recipes, yet we find instructive traces of their cooking methods in tombs dating from as early as the fourth millennium."
---Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari [Columbia University Press:New York] 1999 (p. 16-17)

"Babylonian cookery by which is meant that of the Mesopotamians in what is called the Old Babylonian period, has been the subject of recent resarch, based on a study of three tablets of ancient cuneiform text. These, which are dated to around 1700BC and were probably found in the south of Mesopotamia, constitute between them a collection of recipes, perhaps the oldest surviving one. Eveline van der Steen gives reasons for thinking that these recipes were intended for use in a religious context; and that what would otherwise be puzzling reatures of them can be explained on the assumption that they are all for versions of a meat-in-sauce dish which would be served to a god in his temple, accompanied by bread (probably mixed barley and wheat) and date cakes, etc. The god (probably Marduk in this instance, as he was the city god of Babylon) would eat behind closed curtains. Leftovers would go to the king. It was only in 1995 that Bottero published a full translation and commentary; and discussion will no doubt continue. It does seem clear, however, that these fragments of evidence should not be interpreted as reflecting the food of the common people of the time."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 47)

Need to make something for class?

"Sasqu (Porridge with Dates)
Sasqu is a cream porridge described in the palace records oat Mari. It could be made from ground emmer or barley cooked of a soupy consistency with milk, oil, or water. Dates were added on ritual occasion for elite tables...
2 cups milk or water
3/4 cup barley flour
Salt and date syrup to taste
3/4 cup chopped nuts
1. Place the barley flour in a saucepan. Slowly whisk in the milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Season with salt and date syrup. Turn into serving cups and scatter with the chopped dates."
---Cooking in Ancient Civilizations, Cathy K. Kaufman [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 14)

"Palace Cake
Records from Ur identify cakes 'for the palace' as containing 1 sila of butter, 1/3 sila of white cheese, 3 sila of first-quality dates, and 1/3 sila of raisins. A sila equaled a little more than 3 cups. This recipe has been scaled back by one-third to make the quantities more manageable, but it is extremely rich due to the large portions of butter. Presumably there would be flour and other ingredients that a competent baker would infer to assemble this cake. The dried fruits will stick to the bottom of the pan; if you want to unmold the cake after it cools (rather than serve it from the pan), line the bottom of the pan with baker's parchment, or, to be more authentic, grape leaves. Invert the cake onto a plate and peel off the leaves...
3 cups dates, finely chopped
1/3 cup raisins
2 teaspoons ground fennel or aniseed
1/3 cup cottage cheese
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and at room temperature
2 eggs, beaten together, at room temperature
2/3 cup milk, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Combine the dates, raisins, and spice and scatter in a 10-inch cake pan.
2. Press the cottage cheese through a strainer to break up the curds. Combine the cheese with the melted butter, eggs, and milk and slowly stir into the flour, moistening thoroughly. Pour the batter over the dried fruits and bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean."
---ibid (p. 32-22)

"Dried Fruit Compote
Dates, figs, and grapes and something translated as candy were offered every day to the gods of Uruk. Softening dried fruits would make them easier to chew, and advantage in an era of primitive dentistry.
1/2 cup dried figs, quartered
1/2 cup dried sour cherries
3/4 cup dried apricots, sliced
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
2 tablespoons date syrup
Water, as needed, to cover the dried fruits.
Combine all of the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and reserve. Reduce the cooking liquid by boiling to a light syrup. Combine with the poached fruits."
---ibid (p. 34)