Imagine a scribe 4000 years ago, perhaps someone much like myself, interested in what foods go together and how they might taste. This person, who must have really existed, had a clay tablet and a stylus to write down the most important combinations, leaving for posterity a record of what was eaten in Ancient Mesopotamia.
My interest in this food tradition started when my six year old granddaughter was reading about ancient civilizations in her first grade class. Mesopotamia really caught her interest. She wanted to know how they lived and what they ate. So my son decided to make a Mesopotamian meal. Since he is an archeologist he did some research to find out what foods were available. That’s when I learned of several clay tablets written in cuneiform nearly 4000 years ago, around 1750 BC. That is around the time of the Old Babylonian empire and the reign of Hammurabi. The tablets are now part of the Yale Babylonian Collections. Translations reveal they are the earliest known ‘cookbooks’, listing ingredients and offering some directions for preparation.
Ancient cookbooks? Of course I’m intrigued.
Very few people in Ancient Babylon could read or write, so these tablets must have been for the scrubs and the royalty. There are recipes for stews and breads and grain products, but what intrigued me the most was the reference to a special cook who prepared pastries (mersu) for the king– a professional pastry chef, if you will. Something very like mersu is still consumed in the Middle East. In Turkish, it’s called cevizli.
The ancient tablets don’t tell quantities or methods for mersu. I’ve only seen the recipes in modernized form. One variety is very simple with only two ingredients: dates and pistachios.
Dates have been cultivated in this region for millenia–at least as long ago as 3000 BC. Pistachios, originating in what is now Syria, are even older, with evidence of their consumption from 9000 BC. So while I’m not sure this is exactly what is meant by mersu in the ancient cookbooks, I am confident the ingredients were available, and the ancient Mesoptamians used them together.
Recipe:
- ¾ c. dates
- 1/2 c. pistachios
Mash the dates. Chop and mash the pistachios separately. Mix the date mash with half of the pistachios. Make into small balls, (Wet your fingers to make them easier to roll) Roll the balls in the remaining pistachios.
Back when my kids were little, we often made peanut butter balls, in much the same way: using a mixture of nuts, honey, and wheat germ. I can imagine a royal Mesopotamian mother offering her child a snack of mersu, and popping one in her own mouth at the same time. Plus ça change…
Sources
Coletti, Andrew. Ancient Recipe: Mersu (Mesopotamian, ca. 1750 BCE). Pass the Flamingo. October 25, 2017. Retrieved Dec. 21, 2024. /https://passtheflamingo.com/2017/10/25/ancient-recipe-mersu-mesopotamian-ca-1750-bce/
Historic food – A Mesopotamian sweet from 1750 BC. despite the snow. January 17, 2019. Retrieved Dec. 21, 2024. https://despitethesnow.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/a-mesopotamian-sweet-from-1750bc/
BRIC-A-BRAC 