This tablet from the Yale Babylonian Collection (ybc 4644), measuring 164 x 118 x 33 mm, includes twenty - five recipes for stews and soups. Twenty-one are meat stews, four are vegetable stews.
Clearly meant for experienced chefs, the recipes list the ingredients and the order in which they should be added, but do not give measures or cooking time. These dishes were prepared for special occasions, either for the table of the gods (who were fed three times a day) or for rulers' fancy banquets.
This tablet, and two additional Old Babylonian culinary tablets, were accessioned in December 1933 but may have arrived at Yale in the 1920s. They were originally thought to contain medicinal recipes, until Professor Jean Bottero read them in the 1960s and realized they contained recipes for cooking rather than medicinal instructions.