#assyrian empire
This week, I’m recreating some Akkadian Kukku - or “butter-cakes” - which would have been offered to deities, much like the qullupu I made a while ago, which were used in the worship of Inanna! However this dish seems to have been eaten by Akkadian rulers, rather than offered to deities.
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
1 cup flour
½ cup hazelnuts
½ cup walnuts
1/3 cup honey
½ cup butter
½ cup raisins (or sultanas)
1 egg
dates (for decoration)
Method
1 - Grind the Nuts
To begin with, we need to crush our hazelnuts and walnuts in a mortar and pestle until they take on a sandy consistency. I left a few chunks in my batch - as you can see here - but I cannot recommend you do this, as it makes it rather difficult to take out of your baking tin later on! So, do as I say, not as I do in this case.
In any case, hazelnuts and walnuts would have been cultivated in this region in the Bronze Age, and were used frequently in the civilisations cuisines too!
Place this into a bowl for later, while you cream your butter and honey
2 - Cream the Butter, Mix the Ingredients
Place ¼ of a cup of butter into a large mixing bowl, and pour 1/3 of a cup of honey on top of this. Using a wooden spoon, mash this together until it takes on a smooth, creamy texture.
At this point, pour in your crushed walnuts and hazelnuts, a half a cup of raisins, and a single egg. Also toss in a cup’s worth of flour. Mix all of this together until it forms a wet dough. If it’s looking a little dry as you’re mixing it, you can add a little milk to the mix to bring it together - but no more than a quarter of a cup! You’ll wind up with something that’s more like a batter than a dough.
3 - Prepare Tin and Bake
When your dough is done, butter up a baking tin, and scoop in your dough. Smooth down the top a little, before sticking some dates on top of this. There’s no real pattern to replicate, so scatter them as organised or chaotically as you want!
Place your dough into the centre of an oven preheated to 130C / 275F for half an hour, or until the kukku takes on a lovely golden complexion.
Leave the pan to cool before you take your bake out of the tin - this will help it retain its integrity.
The finished dish is really soft and light, and has a lot of similarities to the Palace Cake from Ur I recreated a few months ago. These cakes are delicious if you drizzle honey over the tops of them before you eat them, so the dough gets imbued with sweet honey goodness.
Judah Kingdom’s Elite Consumed Wine Enriched with Vanilla, Archaeologists Say | Sci-News.com
“Residues of vanilla attest to the great prestige of the wine and to the drinking habits of the elite residents of Jerusalem.”
“Vanilla had to be imported from the tropic environments of India or east Africa,” they said.
“Control over the spice trade routes connecting east and west has often been seen as a prime motivator for the Assyrian expansion to the southwest.”
“The identification of vanilla as one such exotic and prestigious product having been brought over by the desert caravans highlights the economic value of this trade.””
Iron Age subterranean complex discovered beneath Turkish home
““When the Assyrian Empire exercised political power in south-eastern Anatolia, Assyrian governors expressed their power through art in Assyrian courtly style,” said Dr Adalı.
However, the accompanying inscriptions tell the story of integration, rather than conquest. They are written in the local language of Aramaic, rather than Assyrian, and the artwork features religious themes from Anatolia and Syria.”
