6,100-year-old crock pot has earliest evidence of food spicing (and it's still delicious)
About 6,100 years ago, an unnamed Stone Age chef made culinary history when she flavored a simple dish of deer meat or fish, cooking in clay pot over an open wood fire, with the pungent ground seeds of the garlic mustard plant.
Perhaps it was inventive genius at work, perhaps it was a stroke of luck — those details have been lost over time. But the recipe — the earliest evidence of humans flavoring their cooking with spice — has survived.
Researchers at the University of York analyzed burnt food remains from clay cooking pots found in Neolithic dwellings in Denmark and Germany. On the clay, along with meat fats or traces of fish, they found the distinct remains of garlic mustard seeds.
"What we found is that it's definitely being cooked with, mixed with the food," Hayley Saul, a lecturer in York's department of archeology, told NBC News. While cumin, coriander, capers, basil, poppy and dill have been collected at other sites in southern Europe, the Middle East and India, some older, they may have been around for medicinal or even decorative purposes. This is the earliest conclusive evidence of a spice's use in ancient cuisine.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/6-100-year-old-crock-pot-has-earliest-evidence-food-6C10960587
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