Cooking the Oldest Recipe in the World: Ancient Mesopotamian Stew

The oldest recipe in the world? What? Today we're going back 3,500 years and making ourselves an ancient Mesopotamian stew. Hello, friends. Welcome back to Dig In with Raven. It's your new favorite amateur cooking show where the recipes aren't quite clear and the food may be questionably prepared. That last part's my fault, not the recipes. Today we're cooking one of the oldest recipes in the world. That's right, we're going back 3,500 years to ancient Mesopotamia. Even though this recipe is 3,500 years old, a lot of the ingredients are gonna sound really familiar to you. That's because the core foods of this region during the birth of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals make up about 50% of the calories that are consumed worldwide today. Here's the best part. We actually have a written recipe from ancient Mesopotamia. These ancient Mesopotamian recipes were deciphered on what we call the Yale culinary tablets because they're from the Yale Babylonian collection, which makes sense. And these are legitimately the oldest recipes that we have evidence for, which, that's insane. It's insane. I love it. I'm so excited to make this. I just, it just blows my mind for me that can you imagine just the chance of preservation with this? Because we don't have everything. Archeology is a big puzzle with a bunch of pieces missing. So imagine if this was not preserved. That's crazy. We would not have ancient Mesopotamian recipes and it wouldn't have been that hard to erase it from history if the environmental or human conditions were right. We're going back to the very basics of cooking and looking at how humans started to get, you know, innovative and creative with how they were consuming and making food. So I've been using a lot of resources from the Yale Babylonian collection, as well as an amazing book by Jean Botero called The Oldest Cuisine in the World, which is an amazing resource if you want to look more into ancient Mesopotamian cooking and cuisine, how they even just started to, you know, boil water on a fire and then cook meat in this water. Like that is a thing that had to happen. It didn't just, you know, we didn't just always know how to do that. So if you want to read more about that, read his book, I've left a link to that in my description down below. I was also able to get in contact with someone from Yale because they're doing such amazing work with the Yale Babylonian collection. And she so kindly let me make these videos on my channel. So big thanks to her. And I've left links to the Yale Babylonian Facebook page and their website again, in my description and on my website. And as we've already established in the Gilgamesh gingerbread video, I do not know how to read cuneiform, but luckily someone's already deciphered it for us for me to share with you. And also, which is amazing, Yale has, for this recipe specifically, translated it into a modern recipe. So there's not going to be any of me going, hmm, ha, or guessing on the amount of quantities. So I'm just going to go exactly with their recipe and see what happens. The first stew from this Mesopotamian stew feast that I'm hoping to make is called tuhu. Tuhu, tuhu is an apostrophe. We don't really know what the name of this stew means, but Botero does suggest that it has something to do with red beets. And well, there are red beets in this recipe. So maybe, maybe. The translated recipe in its original form is as follows. 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 beets. And you crush leek and garlic. You sprinkle coriander on top. You add currant and fresh cilantro. Thank goodness Yale came through with a proper modern day interpretation because I wouldn't even know where to start with that. So without further ado, let's get chopping. Okay, so the recipe calls for one pound of diced mutton. So I went to my Turkish, oh, it's gross. Sorry, I'm a vegetarian and I haven't, oh God, I'm not disgusted by meat. I used to eat meat a lot. Just, I haven't touched it in a very long time. And now I have to, as they say, dice it. Oh God, oh, oh no. I don't even know how to cut meat. Okay, well, I don't want that. Oh, it smells, okay. The recipe also calls for sheep fat, but I couldn't quite figure out how to tell my butcher that I needed sheep fat because he was also quite concerned already about how I was trying to talk about how I needed a leg of lamb. So we're just gonna compromise today and use another type of fat. And other fats were used, like oils and things. And I know they didn't use coconut oil, but for me, that one seemed like a good substitute. I don't, is that a valve? Oh my God. I am just butchering this poor, already butchered animal. Oh gosh. The things that I do for science, you guys. Yes, get the membrane off. Insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain. All right, that was probably the grossest thing I've done in a really long time. Oh, time for the beets. Now we need one cup of chopped arugula. So that's easy. I'm just gonna do a bunch of rough chops. I don't think it needs to be super fine. Arugula, I'm assuming, gets kind of like spinach when it cooks, so it'll just cook down anyway. Okay, now we gotta do our Persian shallots. And I could not find Persian shallots, and I'm sure I could have if I looked hard enough, but we're at a tight deadline here. So regular shallots it is. One cup of shallots go in the bowl for preparation. Half a cup of chopped, fresh cilantro. Now we're gonna chop, chop, chop, chop to the top. In a mission. Let's chop some leek. All right, we chopped the leek. Two loaves of garlic. And I'm gonna add just the two loaves of garlic into the bowl with the leek, because we're supposed to crush the leek and the garlic together in a mortar and pestle, which I have, it's very exciting. Now, just to be prepared for everything so it's all ready to go, it says to top the stew with something called curat. And I had to Google what curat was because I had never heard of it before, and all it kept coming up with was leek, which was really confusing to me because they already mentioned leek in the thing, so if it's the same as leek, why are we mentioning leek with a different name at a different point in the thing? So it's really strange. But after some digging, I found out that there's something called Egyptian leek, and it looks like that. I searched all over Amsterdam for this Egyptian leek, and I fell short. I failed, my friends. But I did read that it tastes something like a mix between onion and garlic, so to compensate for it, I'm gonna use some spring onions. So everything is now chopped and ready to go. We have our broth, essentially. It's gonna be the fat, some water, and they recommended a white beer, a German Weiss beer. This is a Dutch Weiss beer, but hey, it works. So now let's move on over to the stove and get cooking our stew. All right, everyone, so the stew has finally finished stewing, I guess. And to be honest, even though it has meat in it, like, it still smells pretty decent. I'm really excited. But because it has meat in it, I can't eat it. So you know who has to come and try it, don't you? Oh, oh, what are you? Oh! Yeah! What an entrance. I tried to slide in on the little thing, but it didn't work. You know, that's not a skateboard. I know. It's to help us move out of this house. I know. Gosh. Hi, I'm here to try the meat stuff. Do you know what this is? This, it looks like a stew of sorts. This is an ancient Mesopotamian stew called tu-u or tu-hu. There's an apostrophe in a weird spot. It looks like a whole pot-o-mess. Itamian pot-mess. Anyway, I'm very excited. It smells really good. Although, if I'm totally honest, and don't take this the wrong way, it looks a bit like dog food, but like fancy dog food. You're my little puppy. Oh, that's sweet. Do you want a fork? Smells good? Fork me. Now, to accompany their food in ancient Mesopotamia, people either drank beer or wine, depending in what area they're in. So usually more of a wine in the northern spot and beer in the southern area. And unfortunately, the Yale culinary texts that this came from, the context is missing. We don't know where it came from, which is why context is important to people, because we don't know now to serve wine or beer with this. But some studies, this is where science comes in, some studies on the clay that was used to make these tablets indicate that it came from the south. So I'm going to serve it to you with a beer. Oh, how nice. Yes, there's also beer inside here for some extra flavor. This is a white beer. It's the same beer that I used in the stirrer, so it should go. This is an Eiwit beer from the Brouwerij Het Ei in Amsterdam. Heel dichtbij, very close by, just around the corner, a very popular beer. Very much just around the corner. This brewery is credited with kickstarting the modern micro-brew fascination in Amsterdam. Before they did it, it was pretty much Heineken and its subsidiaries that you were drinking. You'll notice here, Raven is left-handed. Yes. What's wrong with that? I'm not scared. What is the main god of these cultures? Oh, there's Ishtar, is the woman. To Ishtar! Oh. That's a lot. Oh, second bite, okay. There's a lot of beet in here. There's a pound of meat and a pound of beet. But. Pound of meat. It is a very hearty stew. Yeah. I think it could use a little work. Like some shuijing? But think about it, this is like. But also, personally, I'm not a huge beet fan. I mean, I could definitely, if I was in ancient Mesopotamia and they sat me down and they gave me this, I'd be like, oh, this is nice, this is good. It's slightly on the bitter side, but that's just this particular one. But, as a stew, very rich, very yummy. I was gonna say like potatoes would be nice, but they're New World, so you can't get those. Nope. No tomatoes. Really dealing with what they had at the time. Yeah, this is what they grew. And you'd eat it with bulgur or naan bread. Like not a naan bread, but you could do like a wheat, like a very unleavened bread. Do you want me to give a more positive review? I can give a more positive review. You don't have to fake it, I wanna know your real review. Overall, hearty stew. I love stews. Stews is one of the first things when I started learning how to cook, I enjoyed making. And this one is very nice. Will you eat the rest of it? Will I eat the rest of it? Definitely. I didn't think so. I just think it's really cool that like this recipe is a legitimate recipe. Yeah. It was written on a tablet. Oh, so this one is really. It's a legit recipe. Nice, this is from the Julia Childs of the day. Yeah. Oh, I'll take a clay tablet and press it in the soup. Thank you for taking me on this culinary journey to the ancient days. Exertise. Bam. Oh, that was a good one. All right, well guys, hope you enjoyed that video. Hope you enjoyed the stew. If you're curious, go onto the Yale Babylonian site and make the recipe for yourself. They have a few more. They're really, really cool. And they're, you know what? They are fun to make, I would say that. Like really just getting into the nitty gritty and the ingredients. And I will not cook lamb again. It was really gross. But it was fun, I think. Yeah, the rest of it was fun. But I'm not vegetarian for the animals. But touching meat after not touching meat for a long time, it's kind of nasty. If you liked that video, go ahead and smash that like button down below. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on him making a fool out of himself anytime that he comes online with me. And if you like the channel and you wanna support it in a way that is different from liking and subscribing, head on over to Patreon and become a patron. You will get early access to all of my videos. You might even get your name on the screen right here as a supporter. Here are all of my socials. And as always, stay dirty, my friends. Cheers, baby. Cheers. Thank you. You're welcome. To Ishtar! Damn it.