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Imagine sitting down for dinner in ancient Babylon. What would be on the menu? Thanks to clay tablets discovered over a century ago, we're starting to find out. These tablets, written around 4,000 years ago, were originally thought to be about medicine. But in the 1980s, scholars realised that these texts were actually recipes. "Out of hundreds of thousands of cuneiform documents, they are the only food recipes that exist" says Agnete Lassen, associate curator of the Yale Babylonian collection. This means they offer a rare glimpse into the culinary world of this ancient region of Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq.

想象一下在古巴比伦坐下来吃晚饭。 菜单上会有什么？ 多亏了一个多世纪前发现的粘土片，我们才开始找到答案。 这些泥板写于大约 4,000 年前，最初被认为是关于医学的。 但到了 20 世纪 80 年代，学者们意识到这些文本实际上是食谱。 耶鲁大学巴比伦馆藏副馆长阿格尼特·拉森 (Agnete Lassen) 表示：“在数十万份楔形文字文献中，它们是唯一现存的食物食谱。” 这意味着它们为人们提供了难得一睹这个古老的美索不达米亚地区（现在的伊拉克）的烹饪世界的机会。

It seems the cooks of that time were expected to know what they were doing – the instructions are straight to the point, and the amounts of the ingredients are not specified. Despite this, modern researchers have been recreating and taste-testing the ancient dishes. One recipe that has been successfully recreated is a stew called 'tuh'u'. The dish starts with water and seared lamb. Then, in go salt, beer, some vegetables, and for a fiery taste, garlic and coriander. It's a favourite among researchers: "It's pungent and it's very nicely spiced" says Agnete Lassen, "It has good flavours." Another dish turned out so unbearably bitter that none of the other seasonings could be detected, so either the translation was incorrect, or people's tastes were very different back then.

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