The Universe of Disco

The worst literature reference ever

I think I may have found the single worst citation on Wikipedia. It's in the article on sausage casing. There is the following very interesting claim:

Reference to a cooked meat product stuffed in a goat stomach like a sausage was known in Babylon and described as a recipe in the world’s oldest cookbook 3,750 years ago.

That was exciting, and I wanted to know more. And there was a citation, so I could follow up!

The citation was:

(Yale Babylonian collection, New Haven Connecticut, USA)

I had my work cut out for me. All I had to do was drive up to New Haven and start translating their 45,000 cuneiform tablets until I found the cookbook.

(I tried to find a better reference, and turned up the book The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. The author, Jean Bottéro, was the discoverer of the cookbook, or rather he was the person who recognized that this tablet was a cookbook and not a pharmacopoeia or whatever. If the Babylonian haggis recipe is anywhere, it is probably there.)

[ Addendum 20230516: Renan Gross has brought to my attention that the Yale tablets are now available online, so it is no longer necessary to go all the way to New Haven. There are several tablets of cluinary recipes. ]

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