Nuncheon - Adventures in medieval cooking

While I was away from this blog, I cooked the Tuh'u Beet Broth twice for other people; once at a potluck and once at a camping event; both went well, though I will have to try it with a different root vegetable than beetroot at some point.

I've also read a book on cuneiform writing ("Cuneiform", by Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor), watched a good handful of videos of lectures by Irving Finkel who is an utter delight to listen to, read up on Mesopotamian mythology, and took an Open University free course on Babylonian mathematics, because why not. There are also a lot of intriguing youtube videos. I'm certainly not the only one trying ancient Mesopotamian cuisine!

There are things I didn't know before I read "The Oldest Cuisine in the World". Meat was cooked ("prepare water; add fat"); roasted meat was reserved for the gods as the older way of preparing meat. Pepper doesn't seem to have been known in the area at the time the tablets were written - although of course those tablets only give a brief glimpse into the cookery of Mesopotamia. If I really wanted to go down that particular branch of food and cooking history, I would start researching indirect sources, ie other translated cuneiform tablets and other writings to find mentions of food / dishes, including religion (the Old Testament comes to mind) and mythology.

I didn't realise how old the tannur is, the clay oven where bread was baked on the hot inside, like a tandoor, or clay ovens of very similar names all over the region.

I love that the wild man Enkidu in the Gilgamesh stories is tamed not only through sex with a Temple prostitute, but also by eating bread and drinking beer - and lots of both, in fact. Processed food divides human from animal.

There is also the Hymn to Ninkasi, Goddess of Beer, which is an instruction for brewing beer, and it would be interesting to follow those instructions.

There are still recipes in "The Oldest Cuisine in the World" which I want to try, especially the one that reads like a chicken pie, one of the pigeon dishes with mint and vinegar, and one of the porridges cooked with beer that were served with cooked birds, together with thin buttermilk breads and honey. But for now, I'm putting this one aside.


For Ningirsu, the champion of Enlil,
Entemena, the Prince of Lagash,
The elect of the heart of Nanse,
The son of Eanatum,
Had this pitcher of pure silver made,
So that Ningirsu could enjoy his butter in it."
(dedication on a silver vessel by Entemena, king of Lagash, ca 2400 BCE. This Silver Vase of Entemena is now in the Louvre. As for any translation of writings from that time, YMMV.)

Tuh'u Beet Broth. Lamb meat is used. Prepare water; add fat. Peel the vegetables. Add salt; beer; onion; arugula; coriander, samidu, cumin, and the beets. Assemble all the ingredients in a cooking vessel and add mashed leeks and garlic. Sprinkle the cooked mixture with coriander, and suhutinnu.

It appears that "tuh'u" may not be beets but wheatberries.
It also appears that there are two translations, one that says "meat is used", and one "meat is not used", so it may be a vegetable dish, or a kind of porridge cooked with beer and greens. Perhaps in time when more of the cuneiform tablets are translated, these things may become more certain, but unless someone invents a time machine, we just can't be sure what the actual dish was.

For this, I have followed Bottéro's translation above, together with a suggestion found online as to what kind of beer could be used, which was a German Weissbier. As to what tuh'u beets would be, if indeed they are beets, is unknown. I had beetroot, so I used that.

Finely dice onion, sweat them off in fat (I used a mix of ghee and olive oil). Dice as much garlic as you'd like, add to the onions; once they are getting soft, add the diced lamb. Brown the meat and season with salt, cumin, and ground coriander. Put in the diced beets and cover with the beer. Let simmer until the meat is soft and the broth has the desired taste. Add the arugula and leek and cilantro (if used). Let the greens wilt slightly and add some finely sliced fresh garlic.

I served it with bulgur and pomegranate seeds.

Mutton is definitely the right meat to use, because the flavour it gives to the broth is fantastic. If no mutton is available, lamb should be ok. The dish works very well flavour-wise - coriander, cumin, and garlic are a classic combination for a reason. The mint brings freshness to the dish, while the carrots bring the sweetness. The leeks have almost completely cooked away.

The thing I'm not sure about with this version is the mouthfeel - because it's been cooked on a roux-base, it has turned a little slimy, and it sits rather heavy in the stomach.

So the other version I am planning, while still using mutton, will feature turnips if I can get them, beets otherwise, fresh mint, and grains boiled in the broth. If I can't find wheatberries or freekeh, I will probably use bulgur.

It was in the late 1980s that medieval fairs became a fast-growing thing in Germany. They might be compared to renfairs, only more medieval(-ish) and without the fantasy elements. They had music (such as Corvus Corax), fight shows, general entertainment for children and grown-ups, artisans showing off their art, booths selling food, drink, and various medieval accoutrements.
Next to the main fair, there was always a historic encampment where people lived in tents for the weekend, wearing medieval (or Viking, or even Roman) clothes and cooking in pots on open fires, living past lives for a long weekend. These areas were roped off so that none of the fairgoers could mill about or look into people's tents. I can vividly remember standing at those ropes gazing at the encampments with a wistful look, hoping that someone would come and talk to me and tell me how to join these amazing things.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and last year I found myself wearing medieval clothes, cooking in a pot on an open fire, my tent behind me, and modern people watching with a wistful look, and on that realisation I had quite a moment.

Anyway. Back in the late 1980s and probably at one of those medieval fairs I acquired my first "medieval" cookbook, called "Wie man eyn teutsches Mannsbild bei Kräften hält" (roughly "How to keep up a German fellow's strength"), which had medieval recipes for modern cooks. From today's point of view, while it's certainly an interesting first look, it doesn't even have a bibliography or lists the provenance of recipes beyond "this was enjoyed by Sabina Welserin" or "as the monks of Tegernsee made it". Back then I was fascinated, and on one memorable occasion invited a handful of good friends for a "medieval feast", where I/we cooked recipes from that book and ate it by candlelight while we played medieval music on a portable CD player. The invitation was hand-written and probably doesn't survive any more.

Again, fast forward a few decades and a move from Germany to the UK. The year is 2014, and I am visiting Loncon, the World Science Fiction Convention in London, where I happened upon a stall set up by the SCA, with people in medieval clothes doing medieval things and explaining them to people. The wistful look was back, only this time there was a piece of paper where you could write down your email address and location and someone would contact you. I did, and they did, and two months later I was at my first Revel.

There was a potluck.

A few years later, my local branch of the SCA held a weekend event which had a feast on Saturday. I was so nervous before that event, which was after all my first big event, that I spent some time before that in my own kitchen making little marzipan dragons. On the Saturday I was in one of the three kitchens, kneading dough and baking bread which was served at that feast.

From then on, hooks were firmly attached and dragging me into the rabbit hole. Once I realised my early mistake of looking at things I like and finding medieval recipes for those dishes or approximations thereof (something probably born from my experience in cooking and inexperience in medieval recipes) and instead started looking at medieval recipes and finding what I like, there was no going back.

Now, a handful of feasts and open-fire cooking experiences later, I am starting to get a feel for medieval recipes and actually incorporating them into my daily cooking. I have also acquired an as yet uncounted number of recipe books - which is where this blog comes in. So, in the next post I will go back to the Mesopotamian cookbook!

Addendum: I have some pictures in relation to my SCA cooking and might do a photo dump entry later which might amuse.

My son, let me give you instructions, may you take my instructions!

Why not start my journey through historic cooking at the very beginning, in what is arguably the first civilisation's food and drink. In the Yale Babylonian Collection are three cuneiform tablets dating from around 1600 BCE which contain about 40 recipes.

Imagine - someone wrote these down almost 4000 years ago. It's staggering.

Assyrologist Jean Bottéro's book "The Oldest Cuisine in the World" first sets the scene, giving a brief introduction on the history of the region and peoples of Mesopotamia. Secondary and primary sources follow. There are chapters on food preparation and equipment, drinks, and court and religious life as relates to food, all of it fascinating.

I'm currently only on page 27, where the primary sources are listed, and I already want to try two recipes. There is a meat broth/stew with asafoetida, watercress, wild liquorice, cumin, and cucumber which sounds intriguing.



A post about Mesopotamian cuisine would not be complete without giving a link to an invaluable website: Some Mesopotamian Ingredients Revealed by Laura Kelley. Where Bottéro is not sure about a translation, Kelley supplies through research and knowledge of current foods of the region.

A thought on ingredients. Onions, leeks, garlic etc. These are obviously not today's varieties; will they give a similar taste nonetheless? Even meats will be different. If a recipe calls for wild liquorice, is a substitution of today's liquorice and / or aniseed allowed? I will cook and find out as much as I can.