Here’s How Long Humans Have Been Deep-Frying Stuff

For my money, deep-frying is the single best preparation of pretty much any food that exists. The downside, obviously, being that it coats your heart and arteries in a far less delicious form of wrapping. Without the health risks, and the general inconvenience of handling mass quantities of scalding oil, it would be the way we prepare every single food on earth. Have you ever had fried broccoli? It’s the biggest rags-to-riches story to ever reach your taste buds.

Yet, for whatever reason, I always assumed the process of dipping food-to-be in hot oil was a fairly modern innovation. I thought that in olden times, hot oil was simply for pouring over the battlements to stave off the orcs, not for giving mutton extra-crispy skin. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The oldest archaeological evidence of fried food belongs to the ancient Egyptians — a civilization which, maybe partly due to this, was also known for an advanced sewer system.

In the Egyptian tomb of Vizier Rekhmire, built in roughly 1450 B.C., illustrations on the walls show Egyptians deep-frying little treats. Tiger nut cakes, to be exact. The recipe seems to have consisted of crushed tiger nuts (also a great way to get mauled at the zoo!), dates, honey, and water. The finished shapes look triangular in the two dimensional drawings, but attempts to recreate the recipe have shown that a cone shape is more likely and holds up better in the oil or fat. It’s thought that these fried nut treats go back a further thousand years, to around 2500 B.C. 

It’s not surprising to me that they made an appearance on tomb walls given the Egyptian’s outlook on the afterlife. I can’t blame the Vizier for bringing instructions for his old-school donuts. After all, if Heaven is real, I’d like to make sure they know the recipe for Popeyes spicy tenders.