Liquid in which to cook meat
from http://www.enotes.com/food-encyclopedia/mesopotamia-ancient

Among Yale University’s collection of cuneiform tablets are three tablets containing a recipe collection each, a total of 35 recipes. They were composed in the middle of the Old Babylonian period, about 1700 BCE. Nothing has been located 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.

FMM: cuscuta is dodder, a parasitic plant.

Translation from Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia

The necessary amount of roasted ferul [?: nuhurtu]
The necessary amount of roasted watercress [?: sahlu] (cress plant ; cress seed - http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/)
The necessary amount of roasted dodder [?: kasû]
The necessary amount of roasted cumin [?: kamû]
6 liters of water you boil for a long time with (raw) dodder
You add a few (literally: "15") grams of cucumber [?].
(Cook until) reduced to 1 liter,
Strain.
Then slaughter (the animal that will be added)
And toss it in (to cook).