Sweetness from the Palaces of Babylon: How to Prepare Mersu Cake

Cuneiform tablets discovered in the archives of the royal palace of Mari and in the Yale Babylonian Collection, dating back to around 1750 BC, offer a detailed record of one of the oldest and most luxurious royal desserts known in Mesopotamian civilization under the name of "mersu". This sweet delicacy was prepared specifically to be offered as a sumptuous and sacred offering on the tables of the gods within the great temples, such as the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon and the temple of the god Shamash in Sippar. Likewise, it presided over coronation banquets and periodic festivities in the Akkadian and Babylonian palaces, symbolizing the ultimate expression of the abundance and agricultural wealth that characterized the fertile plains of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The Babylonian sweet mersu consisted of a dense and highly energetic food mixture that combined the pulp of highly sweet fresh Iraqi dates, toasted emmer wheat flour or fine barley flour, pure clarified butter known in cuneiform as "hemetu", in addition to a selection of wild nuts such as shelled pistachios and crushed almonds, dried coriander seeds, and powdered seeds of aromatic cardamom or cumin to balance the intensity of the sugar and provide the dessert with a flavor profile that harmonized sweetness with warm spices.

The Babylonian preparation method began by selecting the best varieties of fresh dates, removing their pits and hard fibers manually inside wide wooden mortars, and then vigorously pounding them into a smooth, homogeneous paste free of skins. Concurrently, the pure clarified butter was melted in a thick-walled clay pot placed over mild charcoal, pouring the wheat flour over it to slowly toast it with constant stirring until it acquired a golden color and gave off the warm aroma of toasted grains, thus ensuring the cooking of the starch and the penetration of fats into the flour particles.
The pot was removed from the fire and the mashed date paste was added to the lukewarm mixture of flour and butter, kneading the ingredients by hand until the date dough completely absorbed the fat and flour, forming a cohesive, flexible, and dark-toned dough. Next, the dried coriander seeds were ground together with the pistachios and almonds, incorporating them by kneading throughout the entire mixture to distribute the crunchy texture and spicy nuance. Finally, the dough was stretched by hand on wooden boards smeared with a thin layer of butter and cut into small balls or flat round discs, decorated with whole pistachios and dried wild mint leaves, to be served cold as a complete source of energy that combined high nutritional value with the culinary ingenuity of the ancient royal kitchens of Babylon.