Cooking Through History — Recipes Inspired by the Ancient World

Historical Recipes From the Ancient World

The oldest known recipes in the world were written on clay tablets in Mesopotamia around 1700 BC. Which means humans have been writing down what they cooked — and almost certainly arguing about doing it better — for nearly four thousand years. This is my journey through those historical recipes — cooking through history, civilisation by civilisation: proper food, properly cooked, with the occasional deviation from what the ancients intended.

What you'll find here isn't food history in the academic sense. It's ancient recipes — historical recipes — that actually work in a modern kitchen — or, in some cases, on a flat stone over a fire in the outside kitchen at Casa Adora, which is arguably more authentic anyway. Each civilisation gets at least two dishes: one that represents the everyday, one that pushes things a little further. These are historical recipes worth cooking, not museum pieces. Some have survived largely intact for millennia. Others needed a bit of a flexible makeover. All of them are worth cooking.

Jump to: The Ancient World · The North · Medieval · Al-Andalus

The Ancient World

Mesopotamia

Tuh'u — Ancient Mesopotamian Lamb Stew
Three cuneiform clay tablets held at Yale's Babylonian Collection, dating to around 1700 BC, contain 35 recipes — the oldest written recipes ever found. This is the lamb stew that started it all.

Ancient Spelt Flatbread — A Recipe from Mesopotamia
The bread that went alongside: spelt as a defensible modern stand-in for emmer wheat, cooked on a hot stone or griddle, unchanged in technique from the original. No yeast. No fuss.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Recipes — Lentil and Onion Stew
Lentils, onions, garlic, cumin, coriander — the everyday staple of ancient Egypt, and the direct ancestor of koshari, which Egyptians are still eating today. Four thousand years of continuity in a bowl.

Salt Cod with Herb Dressing — An Ancient Egyptian Recipe
The Nile fed ancient Egypt on preserved fish for thousands of years. This is the same instinct — salt, time, fish — applied to bacalao, with a herb dressing that keeps it honest.

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek Recipes — Skordalia-Style Barley Purée
The ancient ancestor of the modern taverna staple: barley or bread, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, pounded together. Archestratus would probably have an opinion about it. He had opinions about everything.

Ancient Greek Recipes — Grilled Fish with Herbs and Olive Oil
Archestratus — sometimes called the world's first food writer, 4th century BC — was adamant that good fish needed almost nothing. Heat, oil, salt, fresh herbs. He was right.

Ancient Rome

Pullum Frontonianum — Roman Braised Chicken from Apicius
Directly from De Re Coquinaria, the 1st century AD Roman cookbook: chicken braised in fish sauce, wine, oil, and herbs. It's been waiting two thousand years for a comeback and it's genuinely delicious.

Ancient Roman Recipes — Moretum Herb and Cheese Paste
Described in a poem attributed to Virgil: garlic, fresh herbs, olive oil, vinegar, aged cheese, pounded together. Ancient pesto. No cooking required, which the Romans would have considered perfectly acceptable.

Isicia Omentata — Roman Rabbit Burgers
The Roman burger from Apicius: minced meat with pepper, fish sauce and crushed nuts, wrapped in caul fat and cooked lightly. My version uses wild rabbit and pork fat, wrapped in pancetta and glazed with Pedro Ximénez in place of the reduced grape must, and served in ancient spelt flatbread.

The North

Viking Cuisine

Slow-Braised Venison with Root Vegetables and Juniper
Game, roots, and foraged aromatics — the most honestly Viking combination available. Juniper berries grew wild across Scandinavia, flavoured everything, and preserved what needed preserving. A slow braise that does justice to all three.

Skyr with Herbs and Smoked Fish
Skyr is documented in the Norse sagas and is essentially unchanged today — probably the world's oldest continuously made dairy product. Served as a thick, soured base alongside smoked fish and wild herbs.

Medieval

Medieval England

Pottage — The Everyday Dish of Medieval England
Leeks, pearl barley, herbs, whatever else was to hand — the dish that fed medieval England from peasant to palace, the only difference being the quality of what went in. Slow-cooked, honest, and more flavourful than its reputation suggests.

Blank Mang — Spiced Chicken from the Forme of Cury
From the cookbook compiled by the master cooks of Richard II, around 1390: chicken poached in almond milk, spiced with ginger, thickened with rice flour. Sweet-savoury in a way that feels almost Moroccan. Medieval palace food, given a flexible makeover.

Medieval Italy

Ribollita Recipe — Tuscan Bread and Bean Soup — the Tuscan bread and bean soup that's been re-boiled since the 14th century, built on Roman pulmentum and Tuscan peasant thrift.

Al-Andalus

For centuries the land around Casa Adora was part of Al-Andalus, Muslim Iberia, and its kitchens were among the most sophisticated in medieval Europe. Andalusi cooks left written proof: a 13th-century manuscript of recipes from Muslim Spain, and a 10th-century Baghdad cookbook whose dishes travelled west with the court musicians, scholars and cooks who followed Ziryab to Córdoba. When the Christian kingdoms pushed south, many of those cooks went to North Africa, taking the recipes with them. Some of those dishes are still being cooked in Libya, Tunisia and Morocco today.

Dishes with Andalusi roots, some of them still very much alive in Libya. For more from this corner of the kitchen, see my North African Recipes hub.

Al-Sikbaj Recipe — Medieval Sweet-and-Sour Lamb from the Court of Córdoba
The sweet-and-sour lamb stew Ziryab brought from Baghdad to the Umayyad court in Córdoba in the 9th century, and the ancestor of Spanish escabeche. Honey, vinegar, saffron and a layered medieval spice blend, finished with dates and toasted almonds. It appears in the 13th-century Andalusi manuscript, and this is my version, cooked at Casa Adora.

Asida bil-Asal — Libyan Honey and Ghee Dough from a 13th Century Andalusi Cookbook
A soft wheat dough stirred over the heat until smooth, pooled with ghee and honey and eaten with the fingers. It appears in the 10th-century Baghdad cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh and again in the Andalusi manuscript, and Libya still serves it today. A stand mixer helps; the reserved boiling water is the trick.

Sharba Libiya — The Libyan National Soup
Libya's national soup: lamb, orzo and chickpeas in a spiced tomato broth, finished with dried mint and lemon. Its ancestry runs back to Andalusi cooking carried into North Africa by exiles, and it is the soup that breaks the fast at Ramadan.

If ancient Mesopotamian has caught your attention and you want to go further than this series takes you, Arim Hawsho's Table of Gods is worth your time — a serious, meticulously researched cookbook of 70 Mesopotamian recipes, seven years in the making, with endorsements from Assyriologists at Yale, Helsinki and Padua. It's the deep dive. This is the starting point.

Editor's note: Table of Gods was added to this page in August 2026, following the book's announcement.

If you've enjoyed the recipes, you can buy me a coffee ☕ — it helps keep the site going.

Find more recipes and food adventures here.

Browse all recipe collections at The Flexible Chef's Complete Hub Guide.

Wonky photos, proper food, genuine adventures — The Flexible Chef