London/Ancient Cookware, 2. Ancient Data Sources: Excavations and Ancient Texts

Ancient texts from neighboring cultures offer a glimpse of what people ate or aspired to eat without details on how to cook food or how it should taste. The wealth of Hebrew words in the Bible for pots tells us little about how pots were made, used, or what was cooked in them. Since names of foods could change dramatically in a few hundred years, how can we define recipes or cooking practices thousands of years old, given the wide range of choices?