Gift-giving can be hard. I mean what do you get a god who has everything right?
Well if you ask an ancient Egyptian they'll probably say a cake made of tiger nuts and honey.
So that's what we're making today.
Thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we make a cake for the Egyptian god Amun,
except that I'm going to be eating it. So really we're making a cake for the American mortal Max Miller,
this time on Tasting History.
So this is probably the closest thing that we have to a recipe from ancient Egypt.
They didn't leave us any proper recipes but just depictions of making food
and this one I think is probably the most detailed.
It comes from the walls of the Tomb of Rekhmire a vizier, or the right-hand man of
the pharaohs Tutmos III and Amenhotep II around 1400 BC.
So it starts out by showing farmers bringing in the tiger nuts and then those nuts being inspected.
As "The vizier Rekhmire receives tiger nuts and honey in the treasury of the temple
and puts under seal all property given as an offering in the temple of Amun in the function of his office as supervisor of the records."
Next the inscription says "Crushing tiger nuts in the treasury of Amun, Lord of the thrones of the Two Lands,
to make offerings at every festival which his majesty has established."
The crushed nuts are then shown to be passed through a sieve to create flour
before being made into some sort of dough with an unknown liquid added.
So here's our first stumbling block because we don't know what that liquid is. An Egyptologist can't seem to agree.
It could be water or milk, honey, some sort of oil or fat.
Nobody really, really knows so it's gonna be up to us to guess.
What is clear is that once the dough is made, fat is added because an inscription says,
"Add the fat and cook the cakes."
Of course we don't know what kind of fat it is but it looks firm enough for him to add it with his hand
so maybe butter or animal fat of some kind.
Probably not from a pig. They did eat pigs in ancient Egypt but they tended to be eaten by the the poorer,
the poorer classes. So seeing as this is going to be for the God Amun lard is probably not the ingredient.
Another thing that is really not clear is when these cakes are formed in the process
because up until now everything depicted has been fairly chronological
but here we see the cakes being formed to the left to the right and to the top of the person who is cooking them.
But for my money it's cooked before it's formed. One it's going to be easier to form
once the dough is actually cooked and two it looks like he's stirring something and in a fairly small vessel.
Now everything in these depictions is not to scale but based on the size of the cakes that are shown
it makes sense that it's done afterward. I mean this guy's is as long as his arm.
I really hope nobody takes that out of context. 0_o
Once the cakes are formed the question is what goes on them
because there's definitely something on the cake.
Nearby there's a depiction of one man harvesting honey as another uses a three-wick lamp to smoke the bees
but this could be an allusion to the honey that's already used in the dough that's mentioned at the very beginning of the depiction.
There's also a panel that shows someone cooking something that may be a date sauce as right above it
there is a plate filled with dates. That would explain the dark color but still it's not entirely clear
because even the finished cakes are depicted slightly differently from each other so...
slightly different from each other? Slightly different from each other, so it's really anyone's guess.
Another thing that's missing is any other ingredients that might be in this. Some sort of spice,
or another type of flour, we don't know. Like I said it's not a recipe so we just have to do our best.
So with a depiction like this with so many unknowns it's important to remember
that there is no right way. In fact there is only many wrong ways.
It's almost impossible for us to actually know what these exactly were.
So... meh.
Luckily Rekhmire is dead so he can't yell at me and
the god Amun, he ain't around here and the only one judging me is my cat Cersei,
and I've made peace with that so I'm just gonna move forward.
Now of course I did not translate the hieroglyphics on this. That was obviously done by someone about 100 years ago
but if you want to learn how to translate hieroglyphics might I suggest signing up for today's sponsor Wondrium.
I've often talked about The Great Courses Plus on this channel and now they have expanded their library,
and taken on a whole new offering of educational experiences under the new name Wondrium.
I'm often going through their catalog kind of as a way to get inspiration for different episodes.
So most recently I have been watching 'Decoding the Secrets of Egyptian Hieroglyphics'
you know just for fun, and one thing that I learned was that of course
the scribes made mistakes and they couldn't often read what they were actually putting on the walls
until the priest came along who could read them, and was like yeah, that's wrong.
So in an ancient Egyptian version of whiteout they would actually cover it over with plaster, let it dry and then
re-chisel something new in there but over the millennia the plaster has often fallen out
so now we can actually see the original mistakes which is pretty cool.
And the plastering over of those mistakes is called a palimpsest,
and that is your 'hieroglyphact' for the day.
So to learn more about ancient Egypt or basically any topic at all just click the link in the description
wondrium.com/tastinghistory to start your free trial today.
Now with the hieroglyphics out of the way for my version of this recipe what you'll need is:
4 cups or 500 grams of dried tiger nuts.
So what is a tiger nut anyway? Well you might be surprised to find out that a tiger nut is
neither a tiger nor a nut, discuss.
No they are a tuber that grows under the ground and I will let the Greek writer Theophrastus explain.
"In sandy places which are not far from the river there grows under the ground the thing called malinathalle [tiger nuts]...
These, the people of Egypt collect and boil and beer made from barley,
and then they become extremely sweet and they are used as sweet fruits."
In Egypt they could be eaten like this, boiled in beer like beer nuts maybe. I don't know
how beer nuts are made probably not like that though but it works.
They could also be used as medicine or as a perfume that would be used on clothes and to to make a house smell better
like an ancient form of Febreeze.
Now we of course won't be using it for any of those purposes but
it also says that they can be used as sweet fruit so maybe this is like a fruit cake.
1 cup or 325 grams of honey. Now any honey is going to work for this but to be more accurate I am using something
called sidr honey which is darker and not as sweet but more aromatic than most honeys, and
I will put a link in the description to where you can get that.
1/3 cup or 80 milliliters of water,
a half cup or 100 grams of ghee or butter or other animal fat, or if you don't want to use animal fat
then just olive oil or another kind of oil will work too.
Now like I said when it comes to what goes on the cake it's really anyone's guess
so I'm going to be making a very thick date syrup because
I like that and for that what you'll need is: 2 cups or 500 grams of pitted dates soaked in 2 cups
or 475 milliliters of boiling water for about 2 hours.
So first we need to make our tigernut flour and that can be tricky and if done incorrectly you will break your food processor
because dried tiger nuts are tough. Tough like tiger. Which might be is where they get their name, probably not,
but they're really, really hard so I wouldn't fault you for just buying tiger nut flour but
the texture is going to be quite different so I encourage you to make your own.
So just soak the tiger nuts in warm water for about a half an hour and then drain them but even then they're going to
not be terribly nice to your food processor. The blades will actually like get stuck in the tiger nuts and then
it's just not good, so what you want to do is crush them by hand with a mortar
and pestle just to get a coarse grind.
Then once you've broken them into two or three pieces each you can add them to your food processor and blend until you have a flour.
Now even then it's not going to be super fine so you need to put the flour into a sieve and sift out as much as you can
and then return it to the food processor and do it again, and you might have to do it three or four times.
Also if you can find a sieve that isn't too fine mesh otherwise you will just get frustrated.
Once you do have flour go ahead and add your honey and mix until incorporated,
then add just enough water to make it form into a dough. You may not need all 1/3 cup of water,
you may need a little bit more so just add a little bit at a time.
Then set the pan over a medium heat and add the ghee or other fat
and then add your tiger nut dough. You want to keep this moving around pretty much the entire time.
You'll want to cook it for about five minutes or until it gets really aromatic and
kind of a nutty smell comes off of it but you want to keep it moving because the honey will burn
and that's not nice.
They taste like burning.
Then set the dough out on some foil or parchment
and spread it to let it cool for about 10 minutes.
Then we're going to form the cake.
Now by the images it looks like these were formed long ways on a table rather than up into a cone.
It's a lot easier to do that way and it's unclear if these were served like that, like a loaf that
was just in a cone shape or standing up. If you are going to do standing up make sure that the base is flat.
Also one of the sides because you're doing it on the table is going to be flat so it's not round all the way.
Then cover it and let it cool completely. You can also put it in the fridge
to let it firm up a little bit more and while that does cool let us look at this Tomb of Rekhmire.
In ancient Egypt the pharaoh was at the top. He was the chairman of the board,
but the guy who was actually making sure that everything was running and that the kingdom stayed on track,
the CEO if you will, was the vizier and that's what Rekhmir ewas, though he actually had a lot of other titles.
The inscription around the tomb door reads like a pro-wrestling announcers script.
In this corner "The hereditary Prince, the confidant who can approach the person of God,
who is in the heart of Horus, master of the two lands, the notable of whom hearts are revealed,
the sem-priest, the supervisor of all ceremonial clothes, the Sab,
the chief judge, defender of Nekhen, the priest of Maat, the giver of Ma'at for the Lord of the Two Lands,
the Mayor of Thebes, the Vizier,
Rekhmire!"
Elsewhere in the tomb it gives him like another two dozen titles so I'm not going to go through them all,
because the most important one is that last one of Vizier and we actually have the
installation of the office, also written down in the tomb, so we know exactly what this job entailed.
It's very, very long but some of the more important jobs included overseeing the levying of taxes,
keeping an accurate inventory of all the cows and the bulls in the kingdom,
hearing all petitions when the pharaoh was busy.
"Dispensing justice impartially and attentive to satisfying both parties,
judging between the poor and the rich in the same way no petitioner crying because of him."
Very progressive though he accepts these petitions only under certain circumstances.
"The Vizier shall Judge in the office of the Vizier while sitting in a chair with a backrest,
a mat on the floor, with shenep clothing upon him, a skin at his back, a skin under his feet,
a mat upon his lap, the aba sceptre beside him,
40 leather rolls open before him, the Great Ten of Upper Egypt in a row before him,
the director of the private apartments on his right and the person charged with intimate affairs on his left,
the scribes of the Vizier behind him."
Very demanding but is it all that different from what a modern CEO might request?
The Vizier was also in charge of sealing decrees, overseeing the other advisors and the governors,
and sometimes even appointing many of the officials of the kingdom,
but one of the coolest things about the tomb is that it depicts him doing many of these jobs and one of the first
that we see is him going to inspect the temple workshops.
And we get these wonderful images of daily life in ancient Egypt.
They include making beads or sandals, brick makers, metal workers,
a carpenter making a chair, someone drilling a stone vase, sculptors carving a statue, and so so many more.
I can't show them all right now, we'd be here all day but I'm going to put a link in
the description to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where you can see almost all the images online,
they're stunning and yeah go look at those.
The other cool job he had was accepting gifts from other parts of the kingdom and from foreign lands.
From Syria a chariot as well as weapons, horses,
a bear and the world's tiniest elephant. Again things are not to scale.
There's ivory and wine from the Aegean islanders, gold from Crete, and from Nubia hounds and a monkey riding a giraffe.
Once the work is done it's up to Rekhmire to inform the King of how things are going and it seems that
it needed to be good news. He says he must enter the palace stride through the great double doors,
and report "All your things are prosperous and flourishing and each official has made a report
to me saying 'All your things are prosperous and flourishing.'
The same exact thing happens in a modern office setting.
Everything could be on fire, things are falling apart but the boss walks by and asks how it's going you say a-OK boss.
A-OK!
Now along with the tiger nut cakes prepared for Amun
there are also amphora of wine and oil brought in as well as bundles of papyrus and lots of other snacks,
but all these goodies weren't just for the god because Rekhmire got to indulge as well and sometimes with his mother.
One image shows he and his mummy, pun intended,
about to partake in a stack of food which includes bread, duck and even a haunch of beef or venison.
One problem is that when you die and go through the process of mummification your mouth becomes
very tightly clenched and so Rekhmire isn't going to be able to enjoy all the food in the afterlife
but the Egyptians had an answer for that, it was called the opening of the mouth ritual.
"It is Hepet who relaxes the restraints that are on my mouth. It is the god of my city that comes forth
as Thoth, fully equipped with magic; he has released the bonds of Seth from my mouth...
My mouth is opened by Ptah, with his copper chisel, with which he opens the mouths of the gods."
And while this spell which comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead seems metaphorical it's not because
before you went into your sarcophagus either a priest, or more often a family member, would pry open the
mummy's mouth often breaking teeth in the process.
Luckily I'm not dead and mummified quite yet so
nobody is going to have to pry open my mouth to eat this tiger nut cake.
So to make the date syrup for the cake just take those dates which have been soaked for a few hours
and add them including the water that they soaked in into a food processor and blend.
Now really you can use this, it's a nice sweet paste it's delicious but if you want to get even more
date flavor then you can reduce it by taking the paste and putting it into cheesecloth
and squeezing out the liquid. Then set that over low heat and simmer until reduced.
This can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on how reduced you want it and depending on how much
liquid ended up coming out of the dates but keep in mind that it will thicken up a bit more as it cools.
Then you can either eat the cake dipping it into the sauce or you can pour it over the cake,
and here we are ancient Egyptian tiger nut cake fit for the god Amun.
So I ended up setting mine on a plate like this which may be how it was eaten.
It started to tip over and I was afraid
that it would tip over on camera so I set it down, it would make a huge mess but let's give this a shot.
Hmmm! Datey.
So it's very, very sweet obviously. The first thing that hits you because it's on
the outside is the date flavor and that kind of overwhelms everything for a moment and then
it subsides and you get the nuts, and the nut flavor is it's almost like a coconutty flavor and
maybe that's also the texture of like very small shredded coconuts. There's a bit of a chew to it
but it's definitely nutty so that's why maybe they're called tiger nuts even though they're
not a nut it kind of tastes like a nut.
It reminds me of marzipan, the texture too.
I think that if you use just store-bought tiger nut flour it's going to lose a lot of that
pleasant grittiness. There is grittiness but it's not bad, it's going to lose a lot of that.
I don't know. I didn't use use it so if somebody uses it let me know.
Either way this is enough for like 20 people and it's not even as long as my arm so it's not as big as the ones that they made
in the in the depictions but you know what maybe a god's appetite could polish off a bunch of these.
So thank you again to Wondrium for sponsoring this video.
Make sure to follow me on Instagram @ tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and
I will see you next time on Tasting History.