Meat Broth

Excerpt from Everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia By Jean Bottéro:

In the tablet with the twenty- five recipes, all have a constant base of water and fat, most often cooked in 'the cooking-pot', that is by boiling for a long time; but on two occassions, however, for a kind of 'braising' (?), the 'cauldron' was used. The difference between the first twenty-one and the last four is that, while in all cases meat is part of the composition of the dish, the latter add a vegetable, except perhaps the last, where there appears to be no meat. The variations are created by the basic ingredients, the different methods prescribed for the cooking and the presentation of the dish, and the many condiments which give variety to the flavor. Cropping up in all of the recipes, sometimes even in double doses, are the alliaceous plants, especially the well-known trio of garlic, onion and leek, which seem to have delighted the palates of those old gourmets. But there are plenty of others, which we do not always manage to identify with any certainty: mustard (?), cumin (?), coriander (?), mint (?) and cypress berries, for example shuhutinnu and samidu, which must have been alliaceous (again!); and others, such as the surummu, about which we are not even capable of making worthwhile conjectures. Various cereal products - semolinas, flours, barley (?) malted (preferably compressed into little cakes) - were used to thicken liquids and give them smoothness. And sometimes, for the same purpose, milk, beer or blood were also added. Salt was used but, so it seems, not systematically, some dishes appearing to acquire their flavor from their ingredients and seasoning herbs.

Each recipe begins (like our own!) with its title: the name of the dish - taken from its essential component or its presentation - constantly preceded by the generic term mê (lit., 'water', but actually something like stock

'Meat broth. Take some meat. Get the water ready. Add some fat. Some ... [the word is lost], leek and garlic pounded together, and plain shuhutinnu'.

Shuhutinnu is some sort of root vegetable.