Discovered on stone tablets inscribed more than 4000 years ago, the ancient civilisation of Sumer in Mesopotamia can lay claim to be the first people to record a recipe. And theirs was for beer! They began a long tradition of the writing down of ingredients, and a method of combining them, so that others could copy and recreate a dish of some sort.

Isabella Beeton in the middle 1800s was a pioneer of the modern cookery book. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management sold 60,000 copies, and cemented her place among the greats of the genre. In more recent years, TV favourites James Martin, Mary Berry, Jamie Oliver and the Hairy Bikers have sold hundreds of thousands of volumes, regularly writing new books to satisfy the appetite of a hungry public.

Scientists have also suggested some recipes of their own. From what’s needed to make a sun, to the essential elements for a planet, to the ingredients for life. In these cases they theory sounds good, but the practical application is of less use, as building suns and making planets and even creating life is impractical in a science lab.

Although they can suggest the ‘how’ there’s less agreement over the ‘why’.

Perhaps the answer can be found in human creativity. Our desire to make and create, to beautify our surroundings and environment, to build and model and mould tells us something about God’s  creative urge. In the opening few verse of the Bible we read how God made humankind in his image. So it’s no wonder that we reflect back something of our creator and his urge to create. Without recipe or guidelines or ingredient list, God created because he could.

(January 2020)