Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge, Bill Sutherland, got bored sitting in quarantine - so much so that he cooked dinner according to recipes compiled by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. As Sutherland tweeted, he took the culinary guides from a 3,770-year-old cuneiform tablet - one of the oldest "cookbooks" of mankind.

I blame lockdown but for some reason decided to cook Babylonian meal from the recipe tablet on the right; at 1750 BCE are the oldest recipes existing. Seemed to go down OK "Best Mesopotamian meal I have eaten".
A thread 1/6 pic.twitter.com/gqYMJopbxM

- Bill Sutherland (@Bill_Sutherland) June 28, 2020

Fortunately, the recipes have already been deciphered - Sutherland took them from scientific work of colleagues. Following ancient instructions, the professor prepared four dishes, including a stew of lamb and a kind of borscht called "tuhu."

Tuh'u. Thought this looked stunning and full of flavor. Think I should have cooked a bit longer to disintegrate more 3/6 pic.twitter.com/ZTJiQE1XWl

- Bill Sutherland (@Bill_Sutherland) June 28, 2020