The oldest cuisine in the world

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever wondered about the oldest recipes in history? They were discovered on four clay tablets from about 1,700 BCE at the time of the Assyrian Empire. Did you know that about 5 million Assyrians still live around the world today? This year, a cookbook was published that is the first modern collection of exclusively Assyrian cuisine, food that has a lot of overlap with those ancient tablets. It’s called The Oldest Kitchen in the World, and in it, Matay de Mayee records the recipes of his mother, Smuni Turan — recipes her ancestors have been passing down orally for centuries. Today, they join Lilah in the studio to talk about their kitchen.

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The Oldest Kitchen in the World is published in English, Dutch and German — in Dutch and German its title is Haniyé. You can find it in bookshops in the US, Canada, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and online.

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Send us your predictions! Write to Lilah at [email protected] or on Instagram @lilahrap. And — thank you.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, listeners, this is Lila.
0:04.0	I am jumping on before we begin because it's that time of the year, an annual tradition, where we prepare for our predictions episode.
0:13.1	As you may remember, this is where we look back on last year's cultural predictions and predict what we think will happen culturally next year.
0:20.4	We always do it with our
0:21.7	great friend and FT magazine editor at large Matt Vela. So we want your suggestions. What do you
0:27.7	think 2025 will look like when it comes to music, film, sports, books, the arts?
0:34.9	Send me your predictions by email. I'm Lila Rap at Ft.com. Also on Instagram,
0:40.8	I'm Lila Rap, L-I-L-A-H-R-A-P, and it's our last one. So I don't know. Enjoy it extra.
0:48.4	Okay, on with the show.
0:52.5	Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend.
0:55.2	I'm Lila Raptopoulos.
0:57.2	If you go to the Yale University Library, you will find four clay tablets that are about 3,700 years old.
1:04.7	They hold the oldest recorded recipes in history.
1:08.4	Stews, breads, pies.
1:10.7	They're from Mesopotamia, which makes up parts of present-day, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and
1:16.4	Eastern Turkey, and they were likely written down by the Assyrians.
1:21.0	You probably know about the Assyrian Empire.
1:23.4	They ruled way back before the Ottomans, the Romans, and the Greeks.
1:27.1	They're known for their early libraries.
1:29.4	But what you may not know is that there are still 3 to 5 million Assyrians living in
1:34.6	diaspora around the world today.
1:37.1	This cuisine is amazing because it's so ancient.
	...

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