The Egyptian meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert but is organized around the offering table, the hetep: at the center bread (ta) and beer (heqet), the foundation of all food, surrounded by roasted meats, Nile fish, vegetables, and fruits sweetened with honey. The dishes are presented together, piled on mats or alabaster trays, and this same arrangement — bread, beer, beef, poultry, fruit — is carved on tomb walls as provisions for eternity. Eating, making an offering to the gods, and feeding the dead follow the same grammar.

Two pillars of the 18th Dynasty table: emmer wheat flour (Triticum dicoccum), the hulled wheat of the Egyptians, which gives bread and flatbreads; and honey, the only noble sweetener, reserved for royal tables and the gods, which flavors both roast duck and offering cakes.