An impressive catalog of goods formed the ancient Babylonian diet. This inventory included cereals, various vegetables and fruits, bulbs and roots, truffles and mushrooms, seasoning herbs, meat from large and small livestock, pork, game, sea and freshwater fish, turtles, crustaceans, shellfish and locusts. It also included milk, butter and other fats, both animal and vegetable oils, sugary substances from various trees as well as honey and mineral products like salt to intensify flavor.
Bread in Babylonia
The earliest food lists were written in both Sumerian and Akkadian and contained at least 300 breads. Barley and other cereals were ground into flour and mixed with oil, milk or beer. Some were leavened, some were not. They might be sweetened with honey or date sugar or flavored with spices and fruits.
There was great variety in the shape and size of bread, from very large to miniscule and every kind of thickness. Some had unusual shapes and were made in the form of a heart, a head, an ear or even a woman's breast! Bread molds were popular. In the ancient Palace of Mari, 50 different types of molds were discovered.
Ingredients in Babylonian Cookery
A group of cuneiform documents written in Akkadian and datable to about 1700 BC proved to be a collection of cookery recipes that revealed "a cuisine of such richness, refinement, consummate technical know-how and art that we would certainly never have dared to imagine so advanced nearly 4,000 years ago."
All recipes contained garlic, onions and leeks. Flavorings used in ancient recipes included mustard, cumin, coriander, mint and cypress berries. Semolina, flours and malted barley gave thickness and smoothness to liquids. Sometimes milk, beer or blood were also added.
The most ancient recipe, a kind of cake, dates to the beginning of the 2nd millennium. Flour was mixed with oil or butter and dates and other dried fruits such as grapes, apricots, plums, figs or apples and a sort of 'pine' kernel were combined to make up the filling. At least four aromatic seasonings were also added - nigella, cumin, coriander and garlic.
Cooking Methods in Babylonia
The ancient Mesopotamians had well and truly domesticated fire. They exposed their foodstuffs to flame or glowing embers to grill or roast them. They also used intervening agents like hot ashes or shards placed on embers, to modulate cooking heat. Using clay cylinders heated intermally, flat rounds of dough were baked on the walls.
The Mesopotamians had perfected 'domed ovens'. The accumulated heat in the walls and floor allowed them to bake fermented dough and leavened breads in a slow moist heat. They also made use of fire for indirect cooking in a liquid medium. Two principal types of containers were set aside for this purpose, a pottery cooking pot and a bronze cauldron. Meats were roasted, boiled and "touched with fire". Fish was cooked upon glowing coals. One of the more unusual but popular preparations was a kind of locust 'shish kabob'. A relief from the ancient city of Khorsabad shows servants serving them on skewers.
Beer in Babylonia
Beer was the fermented national drink of the Babylonians. Prepared with a cereal base following various refining techniques, it could be made into beer that was 'white', 'russet', 'light', 'dark', 'cloudy', sweetened with honey and flavored with many aromatics, sometimes diluted but often strong. Beer would be drunk from a common vessel by sucking it out of a jar through drinking tubes whose lower end had a kind of grille to filter impurities. Until Hammurabi's time, women brewed beer and the craft was protected by female gods. Ration lists for palace employees recorded the distribution of one quart to one gallon a day of beer, depending on the rank of the recipient.
Related article: The Goddess Ishtar - Supreme goddess of the Babylonian pantheon, Ishtar played a major role in ancient Babylon.
Sources:
Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottero The John Hopkins University Press
Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nijat Hendrickson Publishers
