/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.4486015]

Ancient foods thread?

I'm curious about ancient cuisine. What have you tried and liked?

[Anonymous No.4486020]

soup

[Anonymous No.4486018]

>>4486015
Rice. Though, I want to pour green tea on my rice for shiggles.

[Anonymous No.4486023]

tea
matzo

they're pretty great

[Anonymous No.4486027]

>inb4 Paleolithic diet

[Anonymous No.4486028]

I recently tried bread.

[Anonymous No.4486053]

I had cooked animal muscle the other day...not bad.

[Anonymous No.4486058]

OP: download and watch a British series of three shows titled Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. It's exactly up your alley.
They bake an ancient style of biscuit/cookie that, oddly enough, is very similar to one I grew up with in southern Italy.
Also, the picture you've posted reminds me of fig rolls/fig bars (commonly, though incorrectly, referred to in North America by the genericised trademark "Fig Newtons") which are amongst the most ancient baked desserts known to man.

Other ancient desserts include:
struffoli, a type of deep-fried cookie ball that is then boiled in honey popular in my hometown; they are related to, though ultimately dissimilar from, loukoumades
sno-cones, which date back to ancient Persia where they were flavoured with rose syrup
crêpes with curds and honey are a sweet that has been consumed throughout the history of the Old World from Europe to northern Africa through the Middle East into the subcontinent and beyond into the western parts of East and Southeast Asia

As far as standard foods (not sweets) falafel is pretty ancient, known to pre-Islamic non-nomadic semites starting around 500AD and likely earlier. I can't help you more, sorry.

[Anonymous No.4486062]

>>4486015
I'm sure the standard of living was shit, but I'd still love to be a Pharaoh and live to be 80+ years old.

I haven't even seen the night sky in years because of the light pollution.

I want to live in a hand-made world. Artisanal food, hand-crafted furniture, hand-woven clothes...

mite_b_cool.jpg

I don't think I've ever had ancient food. I doubt any of us have. Unless the rest of these replies count.

[Anonymous No.4486063]

Water

It tasted like shit. Never again.

[Anonymous No.4486064]

Romano Chesse.
Its been the same shit for over a thousand years, since Ancient Roman times.

[Anonymous No.4486065]

>>4486058
I've seen this show before OP, and I highly recommend it.

[Anonymous No.4486067]

I had a fantastic meal of murdărie once.

[Anonymous No.4486068]

>>4486062
>I doubt any of us have

Speak for yourself, pleb.

[Anonymous No.4486174]

Not ancient but when I went to Stockholm, I visited a nifty Viking-themed restaurant/mead bar which was historically accurate and served food from the Viking time period. I had some dank reindeer stew which came with stewed beets, lingonberries, boiled potatoes, bread, and butter. Had a delicious horn of mead too.

>tl;dr had Viking food from like 1000 years ago

[Anonymous No.4486178]

>>4486174

Reindeer and moose stew*

[Anonymous No.4486179]

>>4486174
I love Scandinavia

[Anonymous No.4486180]

>>4486174
>potatoes
>viking
>historically accurate
These three do not belong together, you know.

[Anonymous No.4486183]

>>4486180

>implying Vikings didn't found the city of Dublin in Ireland
>implying potatoes weren't all over Europe

[Anonymous No.4486198]

Does Medieval Times count?
>Medieval Times' noble guests feast on garlic bread, tomato bisque soup, roasted chicken, spare rib, herb-basted potatoes, pastry of the Castle, coffee and two rounds of select beverages. A full-service bar is also available for adult guests. Vegetarian meals are available upon request.

No flatware, just plate, bowl, and cup. Good eats, really. Wish I could afford to go more often :(

[Anonymous No.4486205]

>>4486174
Sounds like the average dinner in Finland. Except the mead.

[Anonymous No.4486209]

>>4486183
That doesn't matter.
Vikings set foot on the northernmost parts of North America, but never anywhere below the equator: potatoes are native to South America. Even the natives to the lands that are today the US had no idea what a potato was. Europeans had no idea what potatoes were until the late 1500s or so in the post-colombian period of South American history. Vikings had long fucked off by that point. The potato wasn't adopted as food by northern Europeans until the late 1700s.

Potatoes weren't a regular part of the colonial American diet, either. In fact, the rise of potato consumption in the US coincides with the Potato Famine in Irish history. With Irish immigration to the Americas so too did come the potato being considered a staple food to English-speaking peoples of the New World.

There is no way the restaurant described is at all historically accurate if it offered potato in any form.

[Anonymous No.4486211]

>>4486198
No, it doesn't fucking count. That's not ancient. I'll say this: I went once and I recall actually rather enjoying my meal.

[Anonymous No.4486216]

There's a channel on youtube with some dude who cooks exactly like people used to in the 18th century.

[Anonymous No.4486221]

>>4486216
Not ancient.

[Anonymous No.4486231]

>>4486216
name plz

[Anonymous No.4486235]

>>4486183
Potatoes are native to the Americas, and not the places the Vikings visited in America like Newfoundland. They didn't get spread to the rest of the world until the 1500's.

[Anonymous No.4486236]

>>4486174
>Viking food
>Not Skreið, oats and milk

[Anonymous No.4486248]

>>4486015

You should give this book a read OP

[Anonymous No.4488469]

>>4486248
will read

[Anonymous No.4490073]

Ful Medames may be the oldest surviving recipe.
Mash cooked beans, add minced onions and lemonjuice and some MSG, drown it in oil.

[Anonymous No.4490077]

The Romans had a fish sauce called Garum which is lost, but seemed to be pretty much like the clear Thai fishsauce. They used it together with straw-wine (an excessively sweet white wine made from raisins) and honey as a sort of MSG.

[Anonymous No.4490094]

>>4490073
Love dat shit. I make wraps of it.

[Anonymous No.4490114]

technically, grilled meat/fish is rather ancient in concept. same with boiled vegetables, it just depend of the choice of meat/vegetables.

[Anonymous No.4490143]

You know what? I'm actually intrigued by what the Egyptians could have possibly ate as a cuisine. You hear about the pyramids, and Ra, and the mummification and stuff. But rarely about their foods and diets.

[Anonymous No.4490147]

>>4486174

Are Peruvians Vikings too?

[Borneo No.4490156]

>>4490077
Garum would be pretty disgusting unless you were the absolute richest elite though, plebs got the bits of rotted guts that sunk to the bottom of the barrel.

Defrutum, on the other hand, is an interesting sauce. It's reduced white grape juice which can be very sweet.

[Anonymous No.4490794]

>>4490143

I know a bit about it. Their diets were actually quite bad through a lot of their history, at least for the poorer people. Egypt dried up quite considerably over its ancient history and a lot of bigger game animals moved on, so meat became a luxury for many people and diet staples were often beer and bread with some fruit and vegetables, and occasional meat and fish. Romans definitely commented on Egyptians being quite small (and Romans were kind of ancient manlets themselves), so it's likely that malnutrition was common. Richer people would have eaten better, though interestingly, a lot of mummies (who would have typically been wealthy in their lifetime) show the detrimental effects of a fairly shitty diet- obesity, diabetes and absolutely wrecked teeth. Dental problems were really common across all classes though, the bread was very coarse and gritty and wore down dental enamel so that cavities soon set in.

Not the best ancient cuisine IMO, though the stuff at banquets would probably have been pretty tasty. And of course we're talking about a time period of thousands of years, so there wasn't really one fixed diet, the climate changed, imported/exported goods changed, etc.

[Anonymous No.4490836]

>>4486183

Potatoes are from Peru. The Irish didn't get them until the 16th century.

[Anonymous No.4490848]

>>4490143
Ful Medames is Egyptian

[Anonymous No.4490854]

According to Herodotus on Egyptian provender:


As to their diet, it is as follows:–they eat bread, making loaves of maize [this would presumably be millet], which they call _kyllestis_, and they use habitually a wine made out of barley, for vines they have not in their land [not so in earlier periods of Egyptian history].

Of their fish some they dry in the sun and then eat them without cooking, others they eat cured in brine [called fasikh, today, and eaten on the day of Shamm al-Nasim]. Of birds they eat quails and ducks and small birds without cooking, after first curing them; and everything else which they have belonging to the class of birds or fishes, except such as have been set apart by them as sacred, they eat roasted or boiled.

hey pound that which grows in the middle of the lotos and which is like the head of a poppy, and they make of it loaves baked with fire. The root also of this lotos is edible and has a rather sweet taste: it is round in shape and about the size of an apple

When they have flayed the bullock and made imprecation, they take out the whole of its lower entrails but leave in the body the upper entrails and the fat; and they sever from it the legs and the end of the loin and the shoulders and the neck: and this done, they fill the rest of the body of the animal with consecrated loaves and honey and raisins and figs and frankincense and myrrh and every other kind of spices, and having filled it with these they offer it, pouring over it great abundance of oil. They make their sacrifice after fasting, and while the offerings are being burnt, they all beat themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburnt of the sacrifice.

[Anonymous No.4490861]

>>4490854

Also, for fun, my favourite Egyptian custom recorded by Herodotus:

In the entertainments of the rich among them, when they have finished eating, a man bears round a wooden figure of a dead body in a coffin, made as like the reality as may be both by painting and carving, and measuring about a cubit or two cubits each way; and this he shows to each of those who are drinking together, saying: “When thou lookest upon this, drink and be merry, for thou shalt be such as this when thou art dead.” Thus they do at their carousals.

[Anonymous No.4490864]

>>4486015

I was feeling adventurous and went and bought some vegetables ive never heard of. I came home with a "Rettich". Google simply translated it into "Radish" but I learned its better known as a Daikon radish.

It was good. Tasted just like radish but much milder in flavour. I couldnt find any good recipes for it so I ate the whole thing raw.

[Anonymous No.4490866]

I'd expect it to be much more bland and boring. And sometimes more salty.

[Anonymous No.4490867]

>>4490861
Memento mori, man.

[Anonymous No.4490868]

>>4486053
sounds exotic

[Anonymous No.4490881]

Did the Ancients have scrambled eggs? Or did they just boil their eggs?

[Anonymous No.4490899]

>>4490854
Do they have something against cooking? Seems they like to eat things raw including the animals.

[Anonymous No.4490916]

>>4486231
http://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson?feature=watch

This guy goes all out when it comes to 18th century re-enactment.

polite sage for not-ancient.

[Anonymous No.4490926]

>>4486015
Bread

[Anonymous No.4490937]

>>4490899

Egyptians cultivated habitual fasting, generally through necessity, by adopting it into the fabric of their sensibilities and customs. You might say it was impolite to have much to do with food. The fancier you were with your victuals the more of a cunt you were.

[idf motherfuckers No.4491009]

idea for an summerian dish:

lentil pudding (daal like) or chickpeas spiced with onions, garlic, lettuce and mustard. serve with barley cakes/flat bread (with onions) and dates

[Anonymous No.4491019]

this really needs to stop
I know you fanboys get hardons for ancient food as it seems simpler and maybe healthier. but follow me for a second
Is it so crazy to believe that our tastes, like everything, evolves with time. As our world gets smaller and we have more access to location specific ingredients/spices, wont we be able to make food that caters to our tastes easier?
Most "ancient" food ive tried is nothing but bland nutrition.

[Anonymous No.4491022]

>>4491009
>idf

You forgot to add the part where you beat up old ladies for fun and drop white phosphorus on schools.

[idf motherfuckers No.4491036]

>>4490794
largely true but

>Romans definitely commented on Egyptians being quite small

most likely bergmann's rule. even today egyptians are only 5'7 as average height.

Consider that egypt was up to the middle ages one of the riches countries in eurasia due to its grain exports. Next to sicily it became "the grainary of the roman empire".

And damaged teeth etc. and other problems you described were common place among almost all ancient cultures (except for the more primitive ones who could afford to hunt a lot, like germanics/balts and some celts).

[Anonymous No.4491045]

>>4491019

You are correct. Even the cultivated of the ancients ate terribly. I would not have the stomach for it.

[Anonymous No.4491050]

>moose, deer, rabbit, elk, blueberries, raspberries, amelanchier, grouse, etc.

Sounds awesome.

[idf motherfuckers No.4491323]

I found something interesting:

An ancient dish (Hallstatt Period) archaeologically proven to be eaten by people of that culture in germany. Something very similar is still eaten in parts of Austria, were it is known as "Ritschert".

Early Celts might have called it "Jewornio est Benai", ancient Germans "hirsijô undi baunoz" (both mean millet and beans)

1.soak some fava beans over night (100g)
2.cook 50g of peeled barley with thyme and bean greens until "half soft".
3.add 200 g of millet and the beans and cook until soft
4. add a little salt (more if you are rich enough) and add large amounts of onions and bear's leek.

eat with some wine, beer or mead

[idf motherfuckers No.4491325]

>>4491323
ah and they often added pork bones or little parts of pork

[Anonymous No.4491328]

A good read:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html

[Anonymous No.4491350]

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq3.html

obligatory

[Anonymous No.4491569]

>>4491350
>http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq3.html
Neat, thanks

[Anonymous No.4491770]

>>4486198
If I remember correctly tomatoes are native to the americas...and even then weren't touched for a fair amount of time due to it's relation to nightshade...

So I doubt anything tomato would have found its way into medieval cuisine.

[Anonymous No.4491792]

>>4490077
>lost
Colatura.

[Anonymous No.4491798]

>>4490881
I know scrambled eggs weren't part of northern European cookery until the 16th fucking century. That late. It's... it's mind boggling! They didn't have frying pans until then!

[Anonymous No.4491803]

godecookery.com has a fuckload of recipes covering a wide period.

[Anonymous No.4491923]

>>4491019
My major issue with modern crops is that, through genetic engineering (selective breeding included) we have cultivated plants that are so genetically weak, they would be choked out and unable to thrive in natural conditions. The foods we eat now would not be able to exist without us taking constant care of them, replanting them in ideal conditions. The resulting food is high yield and fits more to the flavor profile that we crave, but that doesnt make it better for you.

My favorite ancient food is Amaranth, it is what Quinoa was domesticated from. It is a bit harder to cook and smaller, but I think the slightly nutty taste is actually better than the lack of taste in Quinoa.

[Anonymous No.4491968]

>>4490937
>You might say it was impolite to have much to do with food. The fancier you were with your victuals the more of a cunt you were.

implying


>The rich ancient Egyptians' ate meat - (beef, goat, mutton), fish from the Nile (perch, catfish, mullet) or poultry (goose, pigeon, duck, heron, crane) on a daily basis. Poor Egyptians only ate meat on special occasions but ate fish and poultry more often.

Sounds to me the rich ate like kings. Perhaps not enough to get fat like an American. But they ate good.

[Anonymous No.4491969]

>>4491968
forgot source

http://www.historyonthenet.com/Egyptians/food.htm

[Anonymous No.4492162]

http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/index.htm

Not really "ancient", but still interesting

[Anonymous No.4492568]

>>4486015

Step 1: Kill A Dinosaur
Step 2: Cut out a piece of meat
Step 3: Roast over campfire

Does it get more ancient than that?

[Anonymous No.4492580]

>>4492568
I've always wondered what type of dinosaur humans ate back then, their meat seems like it would taste gross.

[Anonymous No.4492587]

Breads like lavash and other types of flat breads. Hummus too. Yum...

[Anonymous No.4492589]

>>4492580
>>4492580
I imagine dinosaur would have tasted similar to poultry, since birds evolved from them

[Anonymous No.4492597]

>>4486174
YFW Potatoes are from the New World and Vikings couldn't have eaten them

[Anonymous No.4492607]

>>4492597
I was gonna tell you that you are full of shit, but I guess you're not.... Well whatya know.

[Anonymous No.4492617]

>>4492597
>>4492607
>Going out for my morning jog
>Suddenly fall through time & space
>Wind up in the 9th century
>Suddenly a viking runs me through with a spear
>As they rifle through my clothing looking for loot I smile weakly and look upward, eyes glazing under a cloudy sky
>I think to myself, "These men will never know the comfort of a warm potato in their pockets"
>My consciousness fades and the last thing I hear as I leave this world is sound of my jogging pants being torn off my body

[Sceak !!LciZj2frsW6 No.4492638]

>>4486015

Ancient cuisine is hard because agricultural techniques are so different today.

I think one would really have to go see the Amish or something to taste ancient foods.

It's really, really different. Today's agriculture is focused on yield, weight, price, and other efficiency factors which really had no bearing in communities, before commercial trade and other absurdities.

[Anonymous No.4492661]

Probably the best "ancient" food I've had was Mexican, elote tamales and a very simple molé. No rice or tomatoes here. It was homemade so I'm not 100% on the ~exact authenticity~ of it, but imho that doesn't matter because it was pretty fuckin awesome. The molé was bitter, but in a good way, the tamales were weirdly sweet-yet-not-sweet due to the corn.

[Anonymous No.4492718]

Guacamole is pre-columbian. Ceviche too.
In both cases, Lemonjuice has to be replaced with Tomato juice,
as this was the main acid ingredient before European contact
brought the Lemon.

[Anonymous No.4493221]

i once tried beer, its really ancient, i think its called the breast milk of civilization

[Anonymous No.4493226]

>>4492718
>ceviche
>precolombian
No. Citrus was introduced to the Americas by Europeans. Ceviche was eaten in Sicily during the Emirate. A cooked version of Ceviche is still eaten in southern Italy to this day. It is called 'escabece' (es-kah-beh-cheh) and is related to Jamaican 'escovitch.'

[Anonymous No.4493237]

>>4493226
> Citrus was introduced to the Americas by Europeans.
I meant
> CEVICHE was introduced to the Americas by Europeans.
Fix'd.

[Anonymous No.4493747]

>>4493237
no...ceviche was not introduced by europeans,its an andean dish

the original ceviches were made withe the juices of fruits native to south america,a type of passionfruit i believe

many south american dishes have of course been retooled and reinvented as a result of european influence tho

[Anonymous No.4493756]

the name ceviche might be related to escabece' but the dishes are not the same...europeans just saw a similar dish and decided to use their word for it rather than bother to use the native word

tortila is a spanish word and by your logic we should believe that corn tortilas arent mexican but an invention of the spanish

[Anonymous No.4493773]

>>4493226
>escabece
escabece is cooked fish and not raw fish...its almost never made with raw fish...its par cooked and stored in viniger to flavour and preserve

[Anonymous No.4493775]

>>4493747
There is not known record of ceviche in precolonial Peru. None. There is, however, a known raw fish salad dressed with lemon juice from the days of the Emirate.

I'm gonna go with the one with the written record.

[Anonymous No.4493799]

>>4493226
pesce crudo is more similar to ceviche than escabece...besides escabece is a moorish dish more common to spain/portugal and its former colonies,considering the fact that the spanish kingdom of aragon ran sicaly for a while the italians might well have learned escabece from the spanish and not the moors

[Anonymous No.4493828]

>>4493799
The Sicilian Emirate predates the Aragonese empire by 400 years. They have records of a raw fish salad dressed with lemon juice. The Aragonese learnt of the dish from the Sicilian Emirate when they conquered it. Alternately, they may have learnt it with the seige of the Emirate of Granada, who also ate the dish.

[Anonymous No.4493831]

>>4486027
Better than a vegan.

[Anonymous No.4493832]

>>4493773
I said that in the very post you're replying to. lrn2reading comprehension

[Anonymous No.4493882]

>>4486183
>thinking potatoes existed outside of Europe prior to the discovery of the Americas
LAUGHING ELF MAN

[Anonymous No.4493885]

many precolombian south american cultures didnt have writing...that doesnt eliminate the potential for precolombian origins to the dish.
many costal cultures with fish heavy diets eventualy figure out raw fish dishes,or fish cure in salt or acid..the Polynesians have raw fish salads with coconut and onion...the Polynesians also had sweet potatoes long before the europeans contacted them or the south ameicans

its fully concievable that ceviche has bassis in precolombian andean culture and that the introduction of spanish culture and ingredients may have just given the dish a new name and a bit of a new style

also...cite your writen source...you can say you have one all you want...but ill believe it and engage the material when i see it

[Anonymous No.4493934]

>>4493828
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2011/10/forklore-the-roots-of-escabeche.html

"There is also a 13th-century Arab recipe for "fish sikbaj-style" -- fried fish marinated (virtually pickled) in vinegar with saffron and celery leaf. In Spain, the meat escabeche died out, but fish escabeche survived. Catalans from northeastern Spain introduced it to southern Italy, where the 13th-century recipe is still followed in making scapece Vastese."

[Anonymous No.4493952]

>>4493775
whats funny tho is that there is esobece in peru....and its often made with chicken,cooked and then marinated in a spiced vinegar sauce

why would they have a dish which bares the name and style so directly...and have a dish which would be barely discernable as escabece?...unless ceviche is just an amerindian dish renamed by the spaniards

[Anonymous No.4493958]

>>4490854
Herodotus is considered to be very full of shit in a lot of cases