the brief history of food
The earliest cookbooks were more than just recipe collections. They consisted of detailed instructions for concocting medicines and potions often interspersed with food preparation pointers to fill in a page. Among the oldest surviving recipes are three clay tablets housed in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. It is from the Old Babylonian period, around 1700 BC. The oldest surviving document in the West that we would call an actual cookbook is the Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking). It is a collection of Roman cookery recipes. It is thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD and is cited by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (77 AD). It can be viewed at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City. Individual recipes are older than these earlier cookbooks. In fact, there are many recipes in use today that date back to ancient times with cheesecake being a worldwide favorite. Cheesecake was the tasty culinar...