[Sca-cooks] food(ography)

[Johnna Holloway]

But I would argue that the clay tablets do not make up a "cookbook".
They may be surviving recipes from an ancient cuisine but they are not
books nor were they assembled into books. They are the barest of  
'receipts'
intended to keep track of accounts and items and what was to be done  
with foodstuffs.
They were assembled into a  book (possibly a "cookbook") only in the  
late
20th century.
Apicius' thoughts on food and eating with his instructions exists
in at least a manuscript that has survived for centuries. Whether it  
is a cookbook or a work of gastronomy
depends I suppose on if one is reading it and appreciating it as a  
historical or literary or classical
document or if one is trying to cook from it.

Johnnae

On Jun 27, 2010, at 9:05 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Nah. There are several tablets written in Akkadian from around 1700  
> BCE (i.e., nearly 4000 years old) that i think currently qualify as  
> the oldest known cookbooks... well, short collections of recipes.  
> Eminent French Assyriologist Jean Bottero analyzed and translated  
> them into French as:
> * Textes culinaires mésopotamiens (Studies on the Civilization and  
> Culture of Nuzi and the Hurr)
> * Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Indiana, 1995
>
> There is a more recent edition in English:
> * The oldest cuisine in the world: cooking in Mesopotamia
> * Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan
> * University of Chicago Press: 2004
>
> -- 
> Someone sometimes called Urtatim