Mind-Benders of Mesopotamian History
The world's oldest recipes are Babylonian — and they're mostly stew
The oldest known recipes were written in Akkadian on clay tablets around 1730 BCE. The best-preserved one lists 25 stews — 21 with meat, 4 vegetable — calling for ingredients like lamb, leeks, onions, garlic and beer, some 3,700 years before any modern cookbook. They are terse enough that scholars have actually cooked from them.
How we know
The Yale culinary tablets: Old Babylonian clay tablets in Akkadian, c.1730 BCE, the world's oldest known recipes. The best-preserved (YBC 4644) lists 25 stew recipes (21 meat, 4 vegetable). A Yale–Harvard team translated and cooked from them (2019). 1730 BCE to 2026 ≈ 3,756 years.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.