The 4,000-year-old Hittite cuisine was cooked in Alacahöyük, an important Neolithic settlement and Turkey's first nationally excavated area. Aykut Çınaroğlu, the head of the excavations and professor of archaeology at Ankara University, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Chef Ömür Akkor, an excavation team member, prepared a special Hittite menu in light of the available archaeological findings. "We conducted research on kitchen culture, food and bread of Anatolian-Hittite cuisine dating back 4,000 years," he said. Akkor added that the food was cooked by imitating the period's conditions. "Ancient settlers wrote that they ate cold meat, cooked onion and bread on a festival day. They did not use yeast while making bread or cook them in moist ovens. The team tried to make it with pounded wheat, not sifted flour," he said.

Akkor said experimental foods were cooked using findings found on ancient tablets. "There is a lot of information about food culture on Hittite tablets. We used buckwheat brought from Germany for cooking. It was crushed on stones and we did not use kitchenware other than a knife. Considering the conditions at the time, we understood that the Hittites were highly successful in the kitchen as well as in other areas," Akkor said, adding that more than 100 pastry names were found on Hittite tablets.