Food of the Hittites

Hittite civilization is one of the earliest civilizations and was founded in Anatolia. The Hittites came to Anatolia through the Caucasus and settled around the Kizihrmak and it’s surrounding area in 2000BC The Hittites who became a great empire in 1450BC turned Bogazkoy (Hattusas) into their capitol city. This is just a brief history of the Hittites but it is the food of the Hittites this post is about.

Hittite Cuisine.

From the Hittite cuneiform tablets it has been possible to establish the agricultural products used as ingredients for their food. Their daily diet was mainly bread, milk, cheese, mash as well as meat and vegetables. Macqueen 2001, 106. Their most important agricultural product was the cereals, they cultivated 4 kinds of wheat and 2 or 3 kinds of barley. It is thought they had a wide range of legumes such as , peas, beans, chick peas and lentils.. Vegetables, root and bulbous plants, carrotts, onions, garlic, leeks and cucumbers, also watercress parsley and olives. In addition the Hittites grew figs, apples, pears, grapes and plums.

We can see from these cultivated products the Hittite cuisine is a cuisine in which, especially bread production held an important place, and simple cooking techniques were used, containing meat dishes and pastries. It is also known that there are many kinds of bread in Hittite cuisine. It was asserted that the bread was consumes by pouring cumin on top of the bread in order to sweeten it.

Among the terms used related to foods, words such as- to cook, to fry, to boil, to grill, to turn, to over cook, are often encountered in the Hittites cuisine (anal 2007 quoted in Sahingoz Et,al 2015:391.

Frying meat on the fire was important in the Hittite period and sometimes it was fried too much so as to burn because it was believed that the gods got the smell of the fried meat and would come down to the earth as it held an important place in the Hittites cuisine when holding festivals. It is also thought that honey mixed with olive oil as a sauce would be poured on the meal in order to enhance the flavor of the fried meat.

The Hittites also made cheese, cottage cheese and butter from the milk of the animals they fed(quoted in Sahingoz.et.al.2015) Therefor the daily diet was predominately based on bread, meat types, milk, cheese mash or paste , as well as vegetables. (Macqueen 2001: 106 )

Various books are written in Turkish about the Hittite cuisine and the Hittite University in Corum in Turkey have published articles in Hittite Cuisine. Hittite food recipes were generally similar to that of contemporary civilizations, especially in regards to meat and dairy dishes, but were unique with regards to the plants used in cooking, as Anatolia has it’s own unique vegetation. Wine was consumed by the Hittites on a regular basis and used for religious festivals and rituals.

Here are two Hittite Recipes which you may want to try.

Recipe l Happena,Happina – In Hittite – open fire

Ingredients 250gr chopped sheep meat, 250gr randomly chopped lamb shank, l sheep neck, 100gr chopped sheep fat, 20 gr salt. Ingredients for the sauce 500gr of honey, l liter olive oil.

Method.

The meat pieces are lined up on a shish and grilled then the meat pieces when cooked are removed from the shish and placed on the bread. For the sauce, Mix the olive oil and honey and pour over the grilled meats,

Recipe 2 – Esri

Ingredients l kilogram of sheep meat chopped, l yearling sheep inner cover ( a weight of abt 2kg) 2 pieces of pomegranate ,and the juice 250gr dry bread crumbs, 2 eggs 200gr of sheep tallow, 25gr salt 400gr butter or olive oil

Method – A hole is made in the middle of the inner cover of the yearling sheep. The meat pieces are crushed or cut with a knife. The tallow of sheep is cut into pieces by the knife or crushed. The meat that was cut into pieces by the knife is kneaded with the grains of the two pieces of pomegranite, dry breadcrumbs, tallow of the sheep, eggs and salt. The internal part of cover is stuffed with this mixture, then the open ends sewn and closed. It is cooked for 3 hours on average. The meat is lubricated with olive oil from time to time while turning. These are recipes which have been carried out at CORUM cuisine http://www.corumkulturturizm.gov.tr

Today it is possible to indicate based on the recipes in the tablets of the Hittite culture, that there are also some dishes cooked according to the possibilities of that era without the use of technical tools and equipment. In the light of the excavations carried out by Ankara University, some of the bread types were baked and the Hittite dishes such as Beruwa with apricot paste, cucumber and chick peas, “Happena and Kariya” with 4,000 years history were cooked by chef Omur Akkor (www.tayproject.org; www. hurriyet.com.tr