Cooks Beware! A Sumerian Caveat

I am going to pour off the fat from the meat,

I am sliding the roasted barley off [the roasting pan]

Who [ever] may hold the bowl [to receive it], watch out for your feet!

The Babylonian recipes also called for the use of an ‘assalu’ (platter) for slow cooking of porridge, and a ‘sabiltu’ (vessel). They had another pan called ‘maqaltu,’ which might well have been used for frying, as it is curiously similar to the Arabic miqlat (frying pan).

For fuel, they mostly used wood, but we learn from Bottéro that they knew charcoal and used it widely in cooking. As for kerosene, ‘naptu’ in Akkadian (cf. Arabic nift), a liquid product from bitumen, which the Sumerians called ‘oil from the mountains,’ its flammable quality was known but it was not yet utilized in cooking (The Oldest Cuisine).