Have you ever cooked a very old recipe?

[purplepoppy]

Over the years I've experimented with various recipes from different historical periods like ancient Rome eg apicius and Greece e. g the Deipnosophistae or medieval French and British cooking e. g Translations are easily found online usual in pdf form but are often very vague and good luck sourcing the ingredients. Most written recipes from here in Wales don't date back far as it's mostly simple farmhouse cooking and they were rarely recorded.

I like how you can often find the beginnings of more familiar recipes or interesting spice combinations.

[goaded]

I can't say I have. I think modern versions of recipes are the corrected versions of older recipes. Even Delia Smith updated her coffee and walnut cake recipe to use mascarpone.

Apart from anything else, modern ingredients aren't the same as they were even a few decades ago. Brussels sprouts are no longer bitter, chickens are no longer the low-fat meat they were, and so on.

It's a bit like medicine. Homeopathy was vastly more effective than other "cures" because placebo, and the other cures were poison. Now cures actually work, a self-prescribable placebo is not that great.

[purplepoppy]

That's true when recipes call for a glass of wine too

[goaded]

Don't all recipes call for a pint of wine?

[RebelinSteel]

We did some random stuff in school, what you would eat in an Iron Age fort, it boiled down to (no pun), we have sheep what stew can we make, we have boar, what stew can we make. Barley bread with Beer was pretty good, mead is a fairly stable drink across Europe. Nettles seem to appear in everything, also pastry over some bird or other.

[nonapink]

I’ve never tried that but maybe it just never occurred to me! I love baking so I’ll be looking some recipes up for sure! You got any recommendations?

[Jersey2]

I would like to try Pompeii bread, its a recreation of the breads found in the ovens of Pompeii.

https://www.popsci.com/diy/how-to-make-pompeii-bread/

[DJB72]

I have a partiality to mead. That's been around since Caesar was boss...

[purplepoppy]

Probably much older, the original proto-indo Europe word it comes from "med" predates Latin. It's one of the oldest words still in common use.

[goaded]

It's called Met in Germany. They German wikipedia says there's evidence of something similar from 7000BC in northern China.

"Nordchina entdeckte Keramikgefäße aus dem Jahr 7000 v. Chr. haben chemische Signaturen gezeigt, die mit dem Vorhandensein von Honig"

[purplepoppy]

It's medd in welsh which unfortunately sounds like meth. I did find a map once that showed how it spread across the world all the way to china

[DJB72]

Whatever the origins, honey wine is quite delicious 😋

[Manab]

Yes, a lot of ancient Roman, French, English, and Aztec food too. I am from India, and so a lot of Indians too. I probably know more about Indian cooking than any Indian alive. A lot of Indian food has changed through European and Middle Eastern experiences. Most Indians now don't know much about many lost recipes

[OlderAndWiser]

I have routinely used a 1931 cookbook I got from my grandmother but nothing older than that.

[bobby_bush_eater]

I have cooked a few from Tasting History with Max Miller. Highly recommend his YT if you're interested in this stuff. Particularly his King Alfreds oat cakes were really good.

[Adventurer23]

I haven't... yet anyway. I'd like to try this one...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FF0HnhuzGak

[exitseven]

In America the oldest recipes were prepared by the pilgrims. They probably involved venison, wild turkeys ans some kind of bovine

[Surely]

What seasoning do you recommend to use on my old recipe (books)?

[Nice222]

Interesting I will have to look into trying that.

[RedInnocent68]

Interesting. Have any of them been any good?

[Kathy1111]

yes i have with my dad

[shortster]

I made my great grandfather's chili recipe.