Today, cookbooks are ubiquitous. Go to any bookstore you can find and you'll see dozens,

if not hundreds of different cookbooks. Search online and you can find tens of thousands of

websites that provide recipes. The story of cookbooks is fascinating because it mirrors the entire

evolution of human civilization, not just how we cook and prepare food, but also how we organize knowledge and what

we deem to be important. Learn more about the history of cookbooks, how they've evolved over time,

and how they reflect our culture on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. I do a lot of episodes on big subjects, world leaders, empires, and technologies that have shaped the world that we live in

today. So an episode on cookbooks may seem a bit out of place. To be sure, we'd still eat food

if cookbooks didn't exist. The majority of knowledge regarding cooking and food preparation

has been passed along from generation to generation for most of humanity

without being written down. Nonetheless, there is a lot that we can learn from the evolution

of the simple cookbook. The oldest known recipes in the world come from Mesopotamia and are

inscribed on three clay tablets dating to around the year 1700 BC, written in the

Acadian language using cuneiform script. These tablets, likely originating from the ancient city of

Babylon, contain about 35 recipes that represent the culinary practices of the elite at that time.

The dishes include stews made with meat, such as lamb, goat, and fowl, often combined

with vegetables, garlic, onions, leeks, and a variety of herbs and spices, including cumin,

coriander, and mint.

Many recipes are for richly seasoned broths and soups showcasing a complex and sophisticated

cuisine far removed from mere subsistence,

which we often associate with people from that period.

However, the instructions are terse and lack precise measurements or cooking times,

indicating that they were intended for trained palace cooks who already understood basic

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