Hammurabi at the table

In Babylon, the meal revolves around an unchanging foundation — barley bread (akalu) and beer (sikaru) — to which are added, depending on rank, slow-cooked broths (tu7 / ummaru) of meat or fish, seasoned with the aromatic trinity of onion, garlic, and leek. Date sweets (mersu) close banquets or feed the gods. No starter-main-dessert: you dip the bread in the broth, drink the beer through a straw, and sweet and savory sit side by side on the same royal table.

Paleo-Babylonian cuisine as revealed by the Yale tablets is built on crushed onion, garlic, and leek, supported by siqqu — a fermented condiment of fish or locusts, a distant ancestor of garum — which brings umami depth to almost every broth.