A taste of antiquity: where they make dinosaur soup and mammoth meatballs

Russian blogger Dmitry Maslennikov bought a frozen mammoth leg in Yakutia for one and a half million rubles to cook soup from it. The culinary experiment failed. The young man noted that the broth seemed to taste rotten, and it smelled accordingly. I didn’t get enough, but I satisfied my curiosity. The blogger said that he was interested in tasting an animal that became extinct ten thousand years ago.

In our country, the attitude towards such experiments is ambiguous. It’s different in China: they don’t shy away from even the strangest food. And one day the whole village ate a dinosaur. Why did Chinese villagers, who were not at all suffering from hunger, take apart and boil an 18-meter sauropod from the Mesozoic era? And why do people in Great Britain carefully preserve a piece of cake that was expired 200 years ago? Talks about this program “Unknown History” with Boris Ryzhov on REN TV.

Mammoth meatballs

Chef Philip Davenport is having his finest hour. He had the honor of preparing the first meatball in the modern world from mammoth meat. True, the meatball recipe was not invented by Philip, but by Australian geneticists and molecular biologists.

“We combined the genetic materials of the woolly mammoth and its closest relative, the African elephant. We built this genetic sequence into a sheep cell, and then from this combined cell we grew a piece of meat,” – said Merlin Crossley, professor of molecular biology at the University of New South Wales.

A meatball weighing 400 grams looks quite appetizing, but the authors of the project have not yet decided to try it. The protein in this meat is thousands of years old, and how the modern human body will react to it is unknown. Therefore, the product will first undergo laboratory tests.

“It has a very bright, unique aroma. It is the smell that our ancestors enjoyed more than four thousand years ago,” – said startup co-founder Tim Noakesmith.

Thousand Year Marmalade

But American biologists Alexander Lorestani and Nick Uzunov were not afraid to taste a product synthesized from DNA several thousand years old. Scientists have created marmalade based on mastodon genetic material.

“We grew collagen from mastodon DNA, from which we then obtained gelatin, the basis of marmalade. We added sugar and flavorings, and it turned out well,” – says biologist Alexander Lorestani.

Dinosaur bone soup

Mammoth meatballs and mastodon marmalade are still cultured products, that is, grown in laboratories. But villagers in the Chinese province of Henan got a taste of real, true antiquity. In the late 90s, during excavation work, villagers dug up dinosaur bones. And they prepared a stew from them. As local media reported, peasants mistook the remains of prehistoric lizards for the skeletons of flying dragons.

“In Chinese beliefs regarding traditional medicine, sometimes there are all sorts of exotic things. For example, recommendations to eat ground dragon bones. In fact, we are talking about dinosaur bones. The fact is that some of the most numerous cemeteries of dinosaur bones are located in Mongolia , in China. A lot of things have been preserved, even entire skeletons,” – said Candidate of Historical Sciences, chef, culinary historian Anton Prokofiev.

Calcium-rich bone soup was given to children to cure cramps, as well as to old people suffering from joint pain. At the same time, the taste of the Mesozoic broth turned out to be very mediocre, so a lot of spices were added to the stew.

“They are essentially fossils, just stone. That is, people ground the stone in this way and used the stone dust as food in the hope that it would give them health,” – the expert noted.

The deposits of the Mesozoic era turned out to be rich – in total, the villagers dug up about a ton of bones. A considerable part of them were sold in local markets, for only four yuan per kilogram. This went on for about 20 years, until one of the employees of the Institute of Paleontology became interested in the “dragon bones”.

“To the horror of paleontologists – When we learned about this absolutely savage method of destroying the oldest dinosaur bones, we were horrified. They saved what they could, and even ended up with a whole skeleton.” – said Prokofiev.

Bread made from yeast from the times of the pharaohs

Video game designer Seamus Blackley recently conducted a unique culinary experiment. He baked bread from yeast that was four and a half thousand years old. The fungal culture was extracted from ancient Egyptian vessels, which are stored in the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

Yeast from the times of the pharaohs made an excellent leaven. Seamus added two types of flour, water, olive oil and baked bread according to the ancient Egyptian recipe. But isn’t it dangerous to try baked goods made from ancient fungal cultures?

“When you bake something at 260 degrees for 40 minutes, everything dangerous is killed. It’s completely sterilized.” – explained physicist and video game designer Seamus Blackley.

The bread is ready, it’s time for tasting. The authors of the experiment were pleasantly surprised by the result.

“Very nice chew, dense texture. And it has a very rich flavor and aroma.” – noted the expert.

Ancient Egyptian Ale Recipe

By the way, emmer wheat, from which this bread was baked, was also part of the ancient Egyptian ale. In the 90s, archaeologists at the University of Cambridge discovered a brewery from the time of Nefertiti during excavations. The fermentation tanks preserved ingredients that allowed scientists to reconstruct the recipe for ancient ale. The drink is completely different from its modern counterparts; for example, the Egyptians seasoned ale with juniper and coriander.

“When the ale was first brewed according to an ancient Egyptian recipe, the very first bottle was put up for auction. It went for as much as seven and a half thousand dollars. But I must say that, of course, here we are talking more about such hype, fashion and a big name. I’m not sure “It’s very tasty” – says Prokofiev.

Queen Victoria’s wedding cake

A considerable sum was also paid at auction for a culinary masterpiece from the era of Queen Victoria. A piece of her wedding cake went under the hammer for two thousand dollars. The work of confectionery art was prepared in February 1840 for the wedding of Her Majesty and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. The cake, or rather a three-tiered fruitcake, was truly royal in size.

“It weighed more than 100 kilograms, and according to tradition, pieces of this wedding pudding were packaged and distributed to the guests. Naturally, not everyone chose to eat such souvenirs, but left them as a memory of this epoch-making event. Therefore, some pieces of the cake have survived to this day and are a collectible” – said the expert.

Confectionery, even royal confectionery, is a perishable product. Therefore, today no one risks tasting a cake that was almost two hundred years old. Its surviving remains are kept in memory of the Victorian era. Two pieces of this cake are in the collection of the British Royal Family.

Different versions of historical events, amazing episodes of history, little-known facts and interesting theories – watch all this and much more in the program “Unknown History” with Boris Ryzhov on REN TV.