Cooking and crafting with old tech?

[RangerWickett]

I'm running a Bronze-age game. I'm curious what sorts of changes there'd be in tech, especially with regard to food. What did people cook, or could cook, with ingredients available in the middle east?

 

[Slife]

Try searching for biblical foods. A lot of the OT is in the bronze age, and much of middle-eastern cuisine hasn't changed since then.

Well... there's a couple of cookbooks on amazon about food around that time period.

"Low cooking (stewing), rather than roasting or frying, was their favorite method of cooking.... The ancient Hebrews prepared and ate most foods with their hands."

Another book has the index online. You can just look at the recipies listed there.

Less in-depth analysis here. You probably don't need to know how to make stuff step-by-step (although it could add something to the mood at the table)
http://www.cvonline.biz/church_biblical_foods.html


The introduction of magic would probably play more of a role in altering cooking than the time period.

 

[Tonguez]

Pretty much everything you can cook now can be cooked with bronze age tech - just think clay and rock instead of iron skillets.

but lots of stews and roasts

 

[RangerWickett]

Did people in ancient Sumeria bake cakes? No sugar.

Did they make cheese-stuffed jalepenos? No jalepenos.

Did they have rum and coke?

I asked because tonight in my game I wanted to have the PCs go to a party with other young townsfolk, and I was a little stuck as to what they would be eating. We ended up deciding that beer and pie would be the celebratory food of choice, since jello shooters and tortilla chips were out.

 

[WayneLigon]

Party food of the area and era, hmmm.

I'm guessing candied dates of some kind, probably done with honey.
Grapes
Soft cheeses (probably goat cheese, or cheese mixed with herbs and garlic)
Figs, both dried and fresh, probably sweetened
If they're rich, they season with black pepper and cinnamon
Wine, of course. Grape wine, pomegranite wine. Maybe date wine.
Bread, with butter; probably unleavened bread. Wheat or barley, or perhaps emmer, spelt, or einkorn.
Beer

And they'll have the normal dinner foods: potage ( a soup of beef or fish and veggies, thickened with bread or rice), breads, onions, garlic, leeks, cucumbers, melons, nuts (Pistachios!), sheeps milk partially preserved with mint, barley stews, etc.

 

[Tonguez]

Did people in ancient Sumeria bake cakes? No sugar.

There is even evidence that in the city of Ur, located in ancient Sumeria, street vendors sold cakes to passersby and that these cakes were very similar to the modern day Middle-Eastern favorite known today as baklava.

It is known, for example, that as long ago as 9,000 years, the people of ancient Jericho enjoyed making cakes by dipping unleavened bread into a mixture of honey and herbs (same site)

Did they make cheese-stuffed jalepenos? No jalepenos.

Okay no Jalapenos but they did have humous and tchina and stuffed Aubergine

Middleeastern Takeaway food - felafel and shawarma (meats on a skewer), tchina, humous, a variety of salads and seasonings all placed in pita bread.
Other toppings for pita bread include sauerkraut, red cabbage, marinated sweet and hot peppers, an assortment of olives, pickles made out of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and carrots and at least five different preparations of aubergine

the main starch staples of the diet were wheat, rice, lentils and humous beans. The most popular vegetable was eggplant; spices and herbs such as cardamom, parsley, rosemary, thyme, coriander, cumin and mint were used lavishly as were the various members of the onion family, including garlic. Lemons, peppers and tomatoes were popular; the principal cooking oil was olive oil; yogurt was widely used; and even though fresh fruits were the most popular dessert, sweets were much appreciated. Even then, eggplant was roasted, stuffed, fried or pureed; humous and tchina were already popular; and any vegetable large enough to have been stuffed was likely to have been filled with some combination of meat, vegetables and rice.

pomegranate seeds in sweet wine,
sweet biscuits,
flavored ice - yes Sorbet!
berries in honeyed cheese

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Interestingly enough, cucumbers were considered a delicacy in the fertile crescent because they were so full of water and hard to raise. Sorry, don't have a cite for that, but I remember it from some Anthro class in college.

A neat period source just now being investigated is the Burnt City in Iran. Google it, and read the articles. You can cull out a lot of neat stuff. Among other things, they found the first recorded animation as well as evidence of brain surgery (mentioned here. I periodically read up on this to see what new info comes out.

 

[Umbran]

Well, home ovens were not known in the bronze age - breads and cakes would be flat things you could do on a hearth - pitas, focaccia and the like.

While sugar comes in around 1200 BC, the refined white sugar we are familiar with doesn't come up until the late middle ages.

 

[Tonguez]

Well, home ovens were not known in the bronze age - breads and cakes would be flat things you could do on a hearth - pitas, focaccia and the like.

Actually in the Middleeast home ovens were known during the Bronze Age albeit mainly in Places and Temples. Ovens from about 3500BC have been found in Syria and Mesopatamia (where they were probabaly invented)

According to Wikipedia the Indus valley had ovens in each mud-brick house in 3200BC

 

[Umbran]

Actually in the Middleeast home ovens were known during the Bronze Age albeit mainly in Places and Temples. Ovens from about 3500BC have been found in Syria and Mesopatamia (where they were probabaly invented)

There is a big difference between "they are available" and "they appear and are available in most homes and are used regularly". The Romans, for example, had the technology, but the common city dweller didn't generally have a kitchen, much less an oven. Before the Franklin stove, ovens were pretty fuel-inefficient things.

According to Wikipedia the Indus valley had ovens in each mud-brick house in 3200BC

You should perhaps read further in the article you quote: "Proper front-loaded bread ovens originated in Ancient Greece." That puts in in the iron age, rather than bronze.

The reference to the Inuds valley ovens is poorly supported (by one sentence in another internet article), and completely lacks a physical description. They may be referring to something more similar to an Indian tandoor.