History's Oldest Dessert - 4,000 Year Old Mersu

Nearly 4,000 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Mari a scribe produced a receipt for one gur of dates and 10 sila of pistachios for making mersu, meal of the king. So using this receipt and other ancient tablets I am recreating mersu, history's oldest recorded dessert. So thank you to Wild Grain for sponsoring this video as we make mersu for the king of Mari, this time on Tasting History. Mersu is the oldest dessert that we have any written record of but it remains almost a complete mystery. Partly because there are many different varieties of mersu and partly because the information that we do have is absolutely incomplete. Take that receipt. Many people have recreated this dish based only on that receipt of pistachios and dates. They're usually ground up and then formed into a ball and that could be the way that some mersu was made. Anyone who can confirm or deny it died well over 3,000 years ago but I think it's only part of the recipe because this is a receipt and so it's like if you were going to make a German chocolate cake and you had most of the main ingredients for a cake at home but to make it a German chocolate cake you needed to go to the store to get coconut and chocolate. Well 3,000 years into the future somebody finds that receipt and says oh German chocolate cake it's made out of chocolate and coconut. Well no, not exactly and I kind of think that's what's going on here. See there are other sources from the period that refer to mersu as nindamersu, ninda meaning bread. So was this some sort of bread or pastry or cake? There are also other sources that talk about it being made with flour and a sort of liquid either water or milk or beer or some sort of melted fat like clarified butter. Then there are others that mention flavorings like apples, figs, raisins, cumin, coriander or even onion and garlic. Finally I think that the dish had to have been more complex than just pistachios and dates because the king that it was being made for Zimri Lin employed eight shamersim or specialists in the art of making mersu. So were these people more like confectioners or even pastry chefs? It's really hard to know but the fact that there were eight of them working in the city makes me think that it was definitely complex work. But making pastry today does not need to be complex work. When you get a delivery from today's sponsor Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first Bake from Frozen subscription box that delivers sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas to your door and they work with small local bakeries around the country to bring their best creations to your kitchen. This gives you the option of making fresh baked sourdough bread at home without the relative hassle of feeding a starter. They also have a wonderful assortment of pastries like croissants, chocolate croissants, and parmesan herb biscuits. And as I have mentioned before they have some of the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had in my entire life. I love them so much that this time they also sent me in addition to more chocolate chip cookies some of their snickerdoodles which I can confirm are scrumdiddlyumptious. So to turn your kitchen into a little bakery then try Wild Grain by visiting wildgrain.com slash tasting history or just click the link in the description and use my code tastinghistory and you will get $30 off of your first order. Plus you will get free croissants for life. And now the instructions that Wild Grain says for baking are excellent. The instructions on that cuneiform tablet to make the mersu less than excellent. But even so here is one possible version of Zimri Lim's mersu for which you will need two-thirds cup or 150 grams of ghee or clarified butter that's been allowed to solidify, one and a half teaspoons of ground coriander seed, two and a half cups or 300 grams of emmer flour. Now you can use regular bread flour it'll actually make the process a lot easier for you but emmer or barley would have been what was used at the time so that's what I'm using, and that dough is going to make something like a pie crust today. It's not going to be particularly sweet but the filling is sweet but if you do want the outside to be sweet as well you can add some date syrup or honey about a half cup. For the filling you'll need one cup or 150 grams of pitted dates, and a half cup or 75 grams of shelled pistachios. So first prepare the dough by mixing the coriander into the flour and then adding the ghee and working it in until everything comes together. If you find that it's not coming together then add a bit of cold water until it does. It's really going to vary depending on what kind of flour you use. Since I'm using stone ground emmer it really does not want to absorb the ghee and kind of work together so it took me about five minutes of working the dough to really make it come together and I didn't need any water. But if you're using bread flour it'll probably only take about a minute to get it to come together and you might need a little bit of water. You can also add the date syrup or the honey here if you're going to use it. Once the dough has come together let it sit for an hour to several hours so the flour can really absorb the ghee or the clarified butter, and if you don't want to use clarified butter then one of the other fats that was very popular at this time was the fat from a fat tail sheep. I wish I could get my hands on some of that fat tail sheep fat but I haven't been able to but one of these days I'm going to use that fat. But regardless of whatever fat you use while the dough rests you can prepare your filling. So grind the pistachios in a mortar. Not so much that they're pulverized but enough that there are just bits of nuts left. Then mash the dates in a mortar as well. It is a very sticky business so you can also use a food processor if you like but essentially what you want in the end is a date paste that will easily combine with the nuts, and in a bowl you're going to do just that. Mash the dates and the nuts together until the nuts are all well incorporated into the dates. Then divide the paste into 18 pieces and roll them into little balls or patties, and essentially what you have is that form of mersu that you would get if you just used the ingredients in the receipt from Zimri's palace, and they're very simple. They are quite delicious, a little sticky but very, very good, and there is something today made in the region called medguka which is similar, very, very similar to these but I think that the mersu that was popular at the time was a little bit more complicated so we got a few steps left. So take the rested dough and divide it also into 18 pieces, and form each piece into a flattened patty in your hand, and then set one piece of the date and pistachio mixture into the center, and wrap the dough around it. Now unlike the dough of a pie crust this does not stretch in the same way especially if you're using emmer which has very little gluten. So it's more of like a patchwork, like you're plastering it around the center of the filling. Then you flatten the mersu a bit and set them on a baking sheet, and decorate if you'd like with a few pistachios on top. Then set them in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 175 Celsius, and bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until they're browned on top. Also a huge thank you to my friend Arim who helped me with a lot of the research for this video, and he actually has another slightly different version of this recipe in his upcoming book which he's working on called Table of Gods. I'll put a link to that in the description. His research is excellent. And like I said the one that I'm making today is just one possible version of this dish though there is a modern equivalent sort of. It's called ma'amoul and it's essentially a butter cookie made with a semolina that is filled with different things like dates and pistachios, but honestly it could be something absolutely completely different. It could be a layered cake, or some sort of even more complex pastry. It could even be like a porridge. We really don't know. Anyone who does know has been dead for a very long time. What we do know is that they were very well liked during the period. They were around for a long time, and one of the people who really loved them was the king of Mari, a man named Zimri Lim. The city of Mari founded around the year 2900 BC was situated along the waterways of the Euphrates allowing it to control the major trade route between the cities of Sumer to the south, and those of the Levant to the north. And for the next thousand years it passed through the hands of numerous civilizations but eventually ended up being controlled by the Amorites under the Lim dynasty where it flourished. And by the time Zimri Lim was born in the 18th century BC, Mari was the commercial hub of the region. A walled city with a massive palace along the river, and Zimri Lim grew up at that palace because he was the son, or the grandson, or the nephew nobody really knows for sure of the then king of Mari Yadumlim, but Zimri Lim had to flee the palace and go into exile when he was relatively young because Yadumlim was killed in a palace coup possibly by another one of his sons, who then two years later was assassinated. And after that the city of Mari was taken over by the powerful king of Asur, Shamshiadad, who styled himself the king of the universe and pacifier of the land between Tigris and Euphrates. Now Shamshiadad had two sons. There was the elder son Ishmay-Dagan who was the golden child, and the younger son Yazma-Adad who was the screw-up of the family. Yet both sons received a city in their father's burgeoning empire. Ishmay-Dagan got the city of Ekalatum and Yazma-Adad, the screw-up, got Mari. And what I love about this period was they wrote everything down, and they wrote it down on clay tablets which have survived the ages. So we actually have a lot of correspondence from this period from Shamshiadad to his sons, and he doesn't seem to have thought very highly of his youngest son, the screw-up. See shortly after he became king of Mari, Yazma-Adad decided that he wanted to build six statues to numerous gods, but he wanted to build them out of gold and silver which was not in the budget, and they would need a lot of sacrifices to keep them happy also not in the budget. So his father wrote to him, These gods that you plan to make require one month of festival sacrifices. What? Where are the oxen and sheep that you must keep providing for sacrifices at festivals? Here you keep writing to me saying, I have no sheep or lambs. Yet you would still fill the town with gods here when however many sheep now available hardly suffice for a sacrifice to them. On top of his financial immaturity, Yazma-Adad didn't seem to actually care for the major work that a king needs to do like settling local disputes, handling the administration of the city, or leading armies. He much preferred the fun parts of being a king like drinking and eating too much, carousing and dancing, that sort of thing. So his father sent another letter. How long shall we govern you? Are you truly a child? Are you not an adult? Is there no beard on your chin? How long will you neglect the administration of your house? Don't you see that your brother is leading vast armies? So as for you, lead your palace and your house. Why can't you be more like your brother? I swear 4,000 years and parents really haven't changed. Nothing's really changed. But turns out that this golden child, the elder brother, was maybe not so much of a golden child because he left the whole empire to that eldest son, Ishmedagan, who almost immediately let the empire start falling apart. And one of the first things to go was the city of Mari. See, Zimri-Lim this entire time had been in exile at the court of the king of Yamad, another of the Lim dynasty, Yarim-Lim I. And as soon as Shamshi-Adad had died, Yarim was like, hey, Zimri, let's go get your father's city back, the one that had been taken from your family so many years before. And with his army, that's exactly what they did. They either killed or at least kicked out the ne'er-do-well son. We don't really hear about him ever again. And Zimri was finally put on the throne. And it was during his reign that Mari was really at its height. He expanded the palace to over 260 rooms, which included a grand throne room that was 82 feet long, a treasury, a temple, an expansive residence, as well as a complex for bathing, numerous kitchens, and food storage rooms. And there was also the palace archives filled with cuneiform tablets documenting the goings on of the kings of Mari. And it's because of these archives that we know so much about this period in this part of the world. And one of the clay tablets found is the one that we're working from today. A receipt which said, And it was even dated, Other tablets from the archives tell of foods like lentils, chickpeas, breads, and porridges being received. Meats of pig, fish, and fowl from small birds to ostriches. In the kitchens were found numerous molds for cakes or breads that were in the shapes of different animals and gods. There are records of many different fruits, and vegetables, and dairy products being served, as well as a drink called alapanu, which was a beer made from fermented pomegranate. Something I would love to make one day here on the channel. What's really cool though is that this drink, as well as the beer and wine being served, was often served chilled with ice. Now you don't usually think of Mesopotamia having a lot of ice, but at this period, in this location, they did. It was documented that Ice from the mountains to the north would actually be brought down, and then kept cold for months at a time in these storehouses that Zimri Lim made. He actually made three of them, but unfortunately Zimri Lim did not get to often enjoy the chilled wine, and the mersu, and the other molded cakes that were being had at the palace because while he was there at times he was often out on campaign. He was out fighting Ishmedagan, trying to get back all the lands which Shamshi Adad had taken from his family, and like I said Ishmedagan who was the golden child to his father was finding it hard to hold on to his father's lands, and Zimri Lim was finding it quite easy to take them back. There is a wonderful letter by Hammurabi, the king of Babylon, that shows this change in fortunes. See at the time there were many, many kings in the region, and there were kind of different levels. There were the upper level of kings and they called themselves brothers, brother kings, and then there was another level of vassal kings that those higher kings called their sons. Well originally Ishmedagan was the brother to Hammurabi. They were on the same level, and then Zimri Lim was actually a son or a vassal king to Ishmedagan, but after a series of poor performances by Ishmedagan everything changed. Hammurabi wrote to him saying to Zimri Lim who writes me as a brother, you Ishme write as a son. Essentially saying Zimri Lim who should have been your vassal is now my equal and you are his vassal. So yeah that that must have hurt, and obviously Ishmedagan did not appreciate this demotion, and so he angrily wrote back to Hammurabi, you made me write Zimri Lim as son? Is that man not my servant? He is not sitting on a throne of his own majesty. But as far as we know Hammurabi never even bothered to write the guy back. For him Zimri Lim was now the main man in the region, and so it was with him that Hammurabi made an alliance both militarily and for trade. On one of the many occasions that Zimri Lim was out on campaign he wrote back to one of his wives in Mari who he had put in charge of the food and wine storehouses saying Hammurabi king of Babylon has written to me for wine. Open up the winestock room with Sid Kumasi standing by, let him purify his hands, then select 11 jars of red wine of good quality that I drink. Mix it in one vat, fill up 10 jars of red wine, seal them with this seal I have sent, and give them to Badi Lim to take to Hammurabi. Then convey to me one jar of the red wine that you are mixing, sending it upstream. There's actually a lot of correspondence that we have between Zimri Lim and the many, many women that he had in his life because he had no fewer than four wives, probably more, and at least 11 daughters and he held them all in very high esteem. He often put his wives in charge of different aspects of the city while he was gone including his main wife Shiptu who he basically put in charge of the whole city, of the whole administration which was not common during this period. Not only was Queen Shiptu put in charge of the day-to-day goings-on of the city, she was also put in charge of conveying messages to Zimri Lim from the gods. Often these were dreams from prophets usually induced by some sort of chemical, a potion that they would drink, but she would have these dreams written down and these prophecies would then be sent to Zimri Lim usually on the battlefield. So most of them have to do with warfare saying oh you're going to win this, or something else that would allow him to strategize. One prophecy that the Queen sent him actually had to do with the victory over his rival Ishmedagan, and it wouldn't even require an actual battle. For there will not be a battle, as it nears his allies will be scattered, Ishmedagan's head will be cut and placed at my lord's feet. But sometimes even the gods got things wrong because that is not how it went down, and unfortunately when the gods got things wrong they got them really wrong. See over the years Zimri Lim and Hammurabi's alliance had started to have some issues, partly because Hammurabi was becoming very dominant and a little too aggressive even with his neighbors near Babylon, and Zimri Lim was like maybe I don't want to help this guy so much anymore because maybe he'll come after me. So he asked his wife to ask the gods about this. For now inquire about Hammurabi of Babylon. Will this man die? Will he be honest with us? Will he battle against us? Well she asked the gods and she got an answer back so she wrote to her husband. This man plots many things against this land but he will not prevail. You will capture him and stand over him. His days are numbered. He will not live long. Well not long after this in 1763 BC Hammurabi requested Zimri Lim to help him fight the cities of Larsa to the south of Babylon, and Zimri Lim didn't comply. Well Hammurabi took over Larsa anyway and when he had done so he turned his sights on Mari, and just about a year later in 1762 BC Hammurabi conquered the city of Mari, and probably killed Zimri Lim because we don't hear about him anymore from this point on. And it wasn't just Zimri Lim who disappeared, it was the entire city of Mari itself because Hammurabi went in, looted the city especially the palace, and then set it all on fire. The palace burned, the top part collapsed and was destroyed, but ironically the burning of the palace is what saved the palace for posterity because the lower walls were all made out of mud and so the fire basically turned them into brick, and so while most buildings from this period are nothing but the foundations, the walls of Mari still stand in places at 13 feet tall. So it's ironic because it was destroyed and yet preserved at the same time, but this is pretty much the last we hear of Mari in the historical record. What's unclear is why Hammurabi did this because he usually when he took over a city incorporated it into the new Babylonian empire, but he destroyed Mari, just wiped it off the face of the earth essentially, and maybe it was because he was so mad at Zimri Lim and for what he saw as treachery, or maybe it was because Mari was quite a bit further north from Babylon and so he thought maybe he couldn't control it because there were other cities in the Levant which wanted Mari as well. Nobody really knows but it essentially disappeared until it was excavated in 1933, and this is when they found 20,000 clay tablets, one of which was a receipt for the ingredients of mersu. So once your mersu begins to brown on top remove them from the oven and let them cool completely, and here we are mersu from ancient Mesopotamia. Can I tell you the entire time that I was filming this episode all I could think of was that line from Aladdin where the street seller is like sugar dates, sugar dates and figs, sugar dates and pistachios, because we've got sugar dates and pistachios. Here we go, let's try it. So it's interesting because the textures are so very different. The outside is like a very crumbly pie dough. You want to get it as thin as possible because this is too thick at the bottom because it's just like eating pie crust, unsweetened pie crust in this version, but then the center is like chewy and rich and really sweet with bits of the nuts left that kind of give it some nice texture. The center is wonderful. Together they're really, really great. Like I said I wish that I had gotten the pastry a little thinner, so you just gotta, you gotta do that when you make them, but the flavors are wonderful. I love pistachios, I love dates, this is great. Really good. So whether you want to make the version with the crust on the outside, or if you just want to make the version that is the dates and pistachios, both are delicious. The dates and pistachios version super, super simple, so there's no excuse not to do it. So go make some mersu, live like an ancient Mesopotamian king, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.