1. The Question of Continuity

Regarding technique, the ancient Babylonian twenty-five stew recipes show a basic cooking method that combines meat and vegetables in a seasoned and enriched stew. Essentially the same type of stew became a staple dish in the Abbasid cuisine, as it is still today. The Akkadian word for broth or stew is ‘mu’/’me,’ literally, ‘water’. It is interesting to encounter similar terms in al-Warraq’s collection, such as meat dishes cooked in broth called ma’ wa milh, literally, ‘water and salt’. The ancient recipes also show that the taste for rendered sheep’s tail fat alya in medieval Arab cooking was shared by high and low. It has been deemed a delicacy in the entire Near Eastern region since ancient times.