[Sca-cooks] food(ography)

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

emilio wrote:
>>From the first cookbook, Apicius, to Julia Child's masterpiece, we're
>>diving headfirst into the glossy oversized tomes spread across your
>>kitchen table. You don't even need a library 
>>card - we'll help you click through virtual 
>>cookbooks and phone apps for all of your 
>>favorite
>>recipes.
>
>A good idea, I like it.
>
>However: Is the work of or ascribed to Apicius the "first cookbook"?

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