The Ancient World
Long before Rome, the first civilisations were already cooking with sophistication. Trace the origins of the table through Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Persia and the Iron Age — including the oldest written recipes ever found and the meal that fed the pyramid builders.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the oldest written recipe?
- The oldest recipes we can read come from Mesopotamian clay tablets, roughly 3,750 years old — a set of stews recorded in cuneiform, rich with alliums, fat and herbs.
- Did bread or beer come first?
- They grew up together. Both depend on cultivated grain and on fermentation, and many scholars think the desire for beer was one of the pressures that pushed people toward farming in the first place.
- What was a Greek symposium?
- A symposium was a formal drinking party where men reclined, mixed wine with water, and talked, sang and argued. Food was secondary to the wine and the conversation, but it shaped Greek ideas of the good life.