How was curry cooked thousands of years ago?

How was curry cooked thousands of years ago?

Scientists from different countries researching the history of dishes, taste experts and experts in reading the oldest recipes of dishes are trying to reproduce the oldest dishes of the world together.

But it is not an easy task. Because the thousands of years old manuscripts in the hands of scientists are very different. For example, the recipe for 'Danbe Ka Stu' appears to be just a list of ingredients. Meat is used. Prepare water. Add fine grain salt. Add dry oats. Add onion and a little milk, crushed onion and garlic.

However, how to ask the writer of the procedure what to insert when? The person who wrote it died four thousand years ago.

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A handful of international researchers, culinary historians and cookbook experts are teaming up to recreate four of the world's oldest dishes.

"It's like recreating an old song," says Gojko Barzhamovic of Harvard University. A single note can change the whole tune.

The recipes are written on tablets from the Babylonian Civilization Collection at Yale University's Department of Archaeology, to better understand the civilization through taste.

Three of these tablets date back to 1730 BC and the fourth is a thousand years later.

All four tablets belong to ancient Iraqi civilizations, including the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations. These areas are now in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The first three plates mention the ingredients used in about 25 curried dishes. Two other plaques mention a further ten curries, along with cooking and serving suggestions, but are in such poor condition that they cannot be read.

The big challenge before the experts is to prepare these recipes preserved in the pages of history using modern spices in such a way that the original taste is preserved.

Pia Sorenson, a food chemist at Howard University, says, "These recipes are not very detailed, barely four lines of recipes." That is, there is a lot of imagination.

Yorado Gonzalez is assisting them in preparing the dishes. The science of cooking is still the same today as it was then.

They are using the same basic science to prepare the dishes.

Scientists' knowledge about human tastes, information about the ingredients used in them and the amount of spices used together with a reasonable estimate are being tried to prepare these dishes

 Sorenson said. In most cases these are curries.

Researchers believe that this is an early form of dunbe stew, which is still popular in Iraq today.

It is known that all the dishes written on the plaques are dishes prepared for a specific purpose, for example one of them is 'Pashrutam' which is a soup that can relieve people suffering from cold.

The list also includes dishes from two foreign countries, Berzhamovic said. However, he said that this still happens. Foods like lasagna and hummus are now popular all over the world and are eaten in different ways.

"These 4,000-year-old plaques give a glimpse of these dishes," says Berzhamovich. Some dishes are their own and some are foreign. The foreign dishes are not bad, just different.

One dish written on the plaque is 'Elamite' curry, which uses blood along with meat. This is forbidden in Islam and Judaism, but the dish originated in present-day Iran. It also uses Suvah, which is not mentioned elsewhere in the tablets.

But this difference still exists today. Sawah is rarely used in Iraqi cuisine. However, the use of sauvah is very common in Iranian cuisine. This shows that the exchange of dishes between civilizations has been going on since ancient times, says Berzhamovich.

It also shows that even in this period there was a spirit of trade and the value of methods as others among different civilizations. It also seems that the Khansamas of this period were also serious about displaying their skills in a particular feast.

Nawal Nasrallah, an expert on Iraqi cuisine, said that one dish looks like a 'chicken pot pie'. It also consisted of pieces of poultry coated in Babylonian sauce on a bread-like base.

Nawal, a researcher of medieval and Arab cuisine, has helped to understand the relationship between cooking methods written on ancient tablets and modern methods.

 I was very impressed by how ancient dishes managed to reach the present day.'

She adds, 'Many things are the same today as they were in ancient times, like we don't just use salt and pepper, but we add many other spices so that the aroma is good. We don't even add them all at once, but slowly add them as they cook. Apart from this, we let the broth cook on a low flame.

Nawal says that during this period, dunbe ka stew was eaten by cooking bread-like pieces of barley flour and soaking them in a curry. But this is still done today in the form of roti or bread.

After many months of hard work and many failures by researchers and food experts, a delicious curry was developed. The leaves of a certain plant played an important role in this.

These leaves are used to add a slight sourness to curries. But too much of it or not putting it in the right place can also make the dish taste bad.

It also surprised Nawal that some of the dishes that are popular in Iraq today were loved in ancient times as well. Because curry and rice are the most common dishes there even today.

Even in this era there were certain rules of cooking which were essential to make the food exquisite. Who knows when they might have adopted these methods?