Ancient civilizations Boiling or stewing was done in small pots placed near the fire or in cauldrons suspended over a fire by chains attached to a beam or hung from a tripod formed by three poles joined at the apex. Meat was probably boiled first, with the vegetables added later. A basic peasant dish was pottage made from grains, beans, or lentils. A large cauldron could easily hold a pig, which was a desired dish of the Celts. Apicius [Ancient Roman cookbook writer] advised that cranes should be boiled in a large saucepan. A cauldron would be idea...The Egyptians used cauldrons or large straight-sided pots supported on stones, or a tripod set over a pan of glowing charcoal. ---Food in the Ancient World, Joan P. Alcock [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2006 (p. 105-106) Native American ...before the Europeans brought them kettles or pots from across the ocean they made use of earthen vessels, which they manufactured with some skill, giving them a spherical form at the bottom and considerable width at the top; and after having dried them in the sun, they burnt them in a slow fire made with bark. The more migratory tribes possessed only wooden cooking utensils, less fragile, but easier of transportation. They cooked their food in these by throwing into the water, one after the other, heated stones. This gradually heated the water, and caused it to boil sufficiently to satisfy people who were accustomed to partly-cooked food....Informants at Grande River and elsewhere state that boiling was sometimes practiced by placing a bark vessel in direct contact with the fire...they cooked their meat in a bark kettle, which they made by using a flint axe or chisel to separate the bark from an elm tree. They tied the large pieces of bark together at the ends with strips of inner bark, making a dish large enough to hold the meat, with water enough to boil it. This bark kettle was suspended between two sticks over the fire, and before the kettle was burnt through the meat was cooked....the greater part of the foods used by the Iroquois seems to have been prepared by boiling. ---Iroquois Foods and Food Preparation, F. W. Waugh, facsimile 1916 edition [University Press of the Pacific: Honolulu HI] 2003 (p. 54-55) Recommended reading (general history of cooking): • Food in History/Reay Tannahill • History of Food/Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat • Food: A Culinary History/Flandrin & Montanari • Cambridge World History of Food/Kiple & Ornelas • The Kitchen in History/Molly Harrison 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 Plinys 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 • Cooking in Ancient Civilizations/Cathy K. Kaufman (includes modernized recipes) • Flannery, Kent V. 1965. The ecology of early food production in Mesopotamia. Science [magazine] 147: 1247-1256. • Food: A Culinary History, Jean-Louis Flandrin & Massimo Montanari, chapter 2: The Social Functions of Banquets in the Earliest Civilizations (Mesopotamian feasts) (p. 32-7) • The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, Jean Bottero (includes modernized recipes) WEB SITES Sumeria, Babylonia, Judea, Purdue University lecture notes Babylonia, Catholic Encyclopedia About Mesopotmia banquets (with picture
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:39:30 +0000
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