Garum

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"Garon" redirects here. For the name, see Garon (surname).
amphorae from Pompeii

Garum is a

Roman world, it was earlier used by the Greeks.[4][5]

Like modern fermented fish sauce and soy sauce, garum was a rich source of umami flavoring due to the presence of glutamates.[6] It was used along with murri in medieval Byzantine and Arab cuisine to give a savory flavor to dishes.[7] Murri may derive from garum.[8]

Manufacture and export

Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville derive the Latin word garum from the Greek γάρος (gáros),[9] a food named by Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Garos may have been a type of fish, or a fish sauce similar to garum.[10] Pliny stated that garum was made from fish intestines, with salt, creating a liquor, the garum, and the fish paste named (h)allec or allex (similar to bagoong, this paste was a byproduct of fish sauce production).[11][10] A concentrated garum evaporated down to a thick paste with salt crystals was called muria;[12] it would have been used to salt and flavor foods.[13]

The 10th century

Byzantine manual Geōponika: Agricultural pursuits includes the following recipe for liquamen:[14]

What is called liquamen is thus made: the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel, and are salted; and small fish, especially atherinae, or small mullets, or maenae, or lycostomi, or any small fish, are all salted in the same manner; and they are seasoned in the sun, and frequently turned; and when they have been seasoned in the heat, the garum is thus taken from them. A small basket of close texture is laid in the vessel filled with the small fish already mentioned, and the garum will flow into the basket; and they take up what has been percolated through the basket, which is called liquamen; and the remainder of the feculence is made into allec.

Ruins of a garum factory in Baelo Claudia in Spain

Garum was produced in various grades and consumed by all social classes. After the liquid was ladled off the top of the mixture, the remains of the fish, called allec, were used by the poorest classes to flavour their staple porridge or

better source needed] and salt could be substituted for it in a simpler dish. Garum appears in many recipes featured in the Roman cookbook Apicius. For example, Apicius (8.6.2–3) gives a recipe for lamb stew, calling for the meat to be cooked with onion and coriander, pepper, lovage, cumin, liquamen, oil, and wine, then thickened with flour.[17] The same cookbook mentions garum being used as fish stock to flavor chopped mallow leaves fried in a skillet.[18]

In the first century AD, liquamen was a sauce distinct from garum, as indicated throughout the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV. By the fifth century or earlier, however, liquamen had come to refer to garum.[19] The available evidence suggests that the sauce was typically made by crushing the innards of (fatty) pelagic fishes, particularly anchovies, but also sprats, sardines, mackerel, or tuna, and then fermenting them in brine.[20][21][22][23] In most surviving tituli picti inscribed on amphorae, where the fish ingredient is shown, the fish is mackerel.[19] Under the best conditions, the fermentation process took about 48 hours.[24]

The manufacture and export of garum was an element of the prosperity of coastal

Greek emporia from the Ligurian coast of Gaul to the coast of Hispania Baetica, and perhaps an impetus for Roman penetration of these coastal regions.[25] Although garum was a staple of the Roman Empire's cuisine, few production sites are known to have existed in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2019 a small 1st-century factory was discovered near Ashkelon.[26] A 2013 storm uncovered Neapolis, a major center of garum production, at Nabeul in Tunisia.[27]

kosher seafood.[28] In the ruins of Pompeii, jars were found containing kosher garum,[29]
suggesting an equal popularity among Jews there.

Each port had its own traditional recipe, but by the time of

Gades (Cadiz)[30] and at Málaga under the Picasso museum
.

Ancient Roman garum factory in Portugal

Garum was a major export product from

southern Gaul, located on the southern tip of present-day France, served as a distribution hub for Western Europe, including Gaul, Germania, and Roman Britain.[32] Garum factories were also located in the province of Mauretania Tingitana (modern Morocco), for example at Cotta and Lixus.[33]

bogues, fish that congregate in the summer months.[34]

Cuisine

Mosaic depicting a "Flower of Garum" jug with a titulus reading "from the workshop of the garum importer Aulus Umbricius Scaurus"[35]

When mixed with oenogarum (a popular

honey wine and drunk.[36]

Social aspects

Garum had a social dimension that might be compared to that of garlic in some modern Western societies, or to the adoption of fish sauce in Vietnamese cuisine (called nước mắm there).[19] Seneca, holding the old-fashioned line against the expensive craze, cautioned against it, even though his family was from Baetian Corduba:

Do you not realize that garum sociorum, that expensive bloody mass of decayed fish, consumes the stomach with its salted putrefaction?

— Seneca, Epistle 95.

A surviving fragment of Plato Comicus speaks of "putrid garum". Martial congratulates a friend on keeping up amorous advances to a girl who had indulged in six helpings of it.[19]

The biological anthropologist Piers Mitchell suggests that garum may have helped spread fish tapeworms across Europe.[37]

As medicine

Garum was also employed as a medicine. It was thought to be one of the best cures for many ailments, including dog bites, dysentery, and ulcers, and to ease chronic diarrhea and treat constipation. Garum was even used as an ingredient in cosmetics and for removal of unwanted hair and freckles.[38]

Legacy

Garum remains of interest to food historians and

archaeologists found evidence of garum in amphorae recovered in the ruins of Pompeii, dating to 79 AD.[40]

Garum is believed to be the ancestor of the fermented anchovy sauce colatura di alici, still produced in Campania, Italy,[39] as well as the fermented anchovy and sardine paste pissalat in the Nice region, France.[41]

Worcestershire sauce is a savory sauce based upon fermented anchovies and other ingredients. Ketchup, originally a savory fish sauce that contained neither sugar nor tomatoes, shared its basic ingredients, culinary functions and popularity with garum.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ (R. Zahn), Real-Encyclopaedia der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. "Garum", 1st Series 7 (1912) pp. 841–849.
  2. ^ Schuster, Ruth (December 16, 2019). "Ancient Roman Garum Factory Found in Israel, Suitably Far Away from Town". Haaretz. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
  3. ^ Stevens, Ashlie D. (February 7, 2021). "Garum, the Funky and Fishy Condiment that Rose and Fell with the Roman Empire". Salon. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  4. LCCN 2011004123
    .
  5. ISSN 1529-3262
    .
  6. ISBN 9789004194724
    .
  7. ^ Perry, Charles (October 31, 2001), "The Soy Sauce That Wasn't", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 12 January 2020
  8. ISBN 978-1-580-08417-8
    .
  9. JSTOR 3295259
    , citing D'Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (London, 1947), p. 43.
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-0-907325-89-5
    .
  11. ISBN 9789004377264
    .
  12. ISBN 9781903018859
    .
  13. ^ Muusers, Christianne. "Recipe for Garum or liquamen, the Roman fish sauce". Coquinaria. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  14. ^ Geōponika: Agricultural pursuits, Vol. II, pp. 299–300; translated from the Greek by Thomas Owen; London 1806.
  15. ^ Martial, Epigrams 13.
  16. ^ Toussaint-Samat, The History of Food, revised ed. 2009, p. 338f.
  17. ^ The Roman Cookery Book, trans. Flower and Rosenbaum, pp. 188–89.
  18. ^ Apicius, De Re Coquinaria (Book III, section VIII)
  19. ^
    JSTOR 3297180
    .
  20. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.27462C
  21. ISBN 9781903018477
    .
  22. ISBN 9780521800549
    .
  23. ^ Zaret, PM (2004) Liquamen and other fish sauces" Repast, 20 (4) : 3–4 and 8.
  24. ISSN 1097-0010
    .
  25. ^ a b Toussaint-Samat (2009).
  26. ^ Borschel-Dan, Amanda (16 December 2019). "Factory for Romans' favorite funky fish sauce discovered near Ashkelon". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2019-12-18.
  27. ^ Day, Joel (19 August 2021). "Archaeology breakthrough after storm uncovered lost ancient Roman city on Tunisian coast". Express.co.uk.
  28. ISBN 978-0802866059
    .
  29. ^ Harvey, Brian. "Graffiti from Pompeii". Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2015-04-25. Herculaneum. Stamps on jars of garum. 2569: Kosher garum
  30. ^ "Gadir archaeological site". spain.info.
  31. ^ Millennium bcp Foundation, Rua dos Correeiros 21 Fundação Millennium bcp—Núcleo Arqueológico
  32. ^ Curtis, Robert I. 1988. Spanish Trade in Salted Fish Products in the 1st and 2nd Centuries A.D. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. XXXIX. 205–210.
  33. ^ Trakadas, Athena (2005). "The Archaeological Evidence for Fish Processing in the Western Mediterranean". In Bekker-Nielsen, Tonnes (ed.). Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region. Black Sea Studies 2. Vol. 110. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. pp. 64–66.
  34. ^ Lorenzi, Rossella (2017-05-10). "Fish Sauce Used to Date Pompeii Eruption". Discovery. Archived from the original on November 27, 2012.
  35. ^ G(ari) F(los) SCOM(bri) SCAURI EX OFFI(ci)NA SCAURI, from Pompeii
  36. ^ Pliny, Historia Naturalis 13.93.
  37. PMID 26741568
    .
  38. PMID 6389686
    .
  39. ^ a b Prichep, Deena (26 October 2013). "Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again". NPR. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  40. ^ Valeri, Salvatore; Bika, Koldo (12 October 2017). "The ancient condiment that came back from the dead". BBC. Retrieved 14 October 2017.
  41. doi:10.52750/793108. Archived
    from the original on 2023-06-29. Retrieved 2023-07-03.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Garum.
  • Garum, in James Grout's Encyclopædia Romana
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