This is a pretty neat website, although it has the usual limits of history. Fried chicken is almost certainly older than the oldest source attesting to it, for example.
It is interesting, and probably unsurprising, that the earliest recipes after "Water and Ice" and mostly right up to "Bear, venison, and horsemeat" involve foods where particular cautions must be taken to not harm or kill oneself by eating them- Poisonous mushrooms, bear's liver, shellfish seasonality... Maybe squid, fish, and insects less so, I don't know.
I think the first column represents the approximate age at which we can (currently) date the food coming into use, which in older cases may be based on archaeology rather than history; the second column is recipes on record, which is generally history.
It's noteworthy that some of the oldest foods have no date: we can assume that water and ice have been in use since humanity's ancestors obtained anything similar to our current biology, and it is therefore improbable that we will ever settle on a precise date for that. If not quite 'as old as the world,' their use is very much older than we are ourselves.
Actually even some of the older recipes are archaeological rather than historical in nature. They can approximate when bread became a recipe because of archaeological finds, for example.
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Loads of fun.
It is interesting, and probably unsurprising, that the earliest recipes after "Water and Ice" and mostly right up to "Bear, venison, and horsemeat" involve foods where particular cautions must be taken to not harm or kill oneself by eating them- Poisonous mushrooms, bear's liver, shellfish seasonality... Maybe squid, fish, and insects less so, I don't know.
Second look, I'm not sure what the first column represents, not recipes?
Anyway, the entry on Goulash (Gulyas) is very good in it's depth.
I think the first column represents the approximate age at which we can (currently) date the food coming into use, which in older cases may be based on archaeology rather than history; the second column is recipes on record, which is generally history.
It's noteworthy that some of the oldest foods have no date: we can assume that water and ice have been in use since humanity's ancestors obtained anything similar to our current biology, and it is therefore improbable that we will ever settle on a precise date for that. If not quite 'as old as the world,' their use is very much older than we are ourselves.
Actually even some of the older recipes are archaeological rather than historical in nature. They can approximate when bread became a recipe because of archaeological finds, for example.
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