Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 12:50, 13 October 2021

Manufacture and export

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.

Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville derive the Latin word garum from the Template:Lang-grc (gáros), a food named by Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Garos may have been a type of fish, or a fish sauce similar to garum. 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). A concentrated garum evaporated down to a thick paste with salt crystals was called muria; it would have been used to salt and flavor foods.

Garum was produced in various grades consumed by all social classes. After the liquid was ladled off of the top of the mixture, the remains of the fish, called allec, was used by the poorest classes to flavour their staple porridge or farinata. The finished product—the nobile garum of Martial's epigram—was apparently mild and subtle in flavor. The best garum fetched extraordinarily high prices, 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. The same cookbook mentions garum being used as fish stock to flavor chopped mallow leaves fried in a skillet.

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. 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. In most surviving tituli picti inscribed on amphorae, where the fish ingredient is shown, the fish is mackerel. Under the best conditions, the fermentation process took about 48 hours.

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. Although it was a staple of the Roman Empire's cuisine, few production sites were known to exist in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2019 a small 1st-century factory was discovered near Ashkelon.

Pliny the Elder spoke of a type of garum that Roman Jews may have used, as normal garum would not have been considered kosher.

In the ruins of Pompeii, jars were found containing kosher garum, suggesting an equal popularity among Jews there. Each port had its own traditional recipe, but by the time of Augustus, Romans considered the best to be garum from Cartagena and Gades in Baetica.

This product was called garum sociorum, "garum of the allies". The ruins of a garum factory remain at the Baetian site of Baelo Claudia (in present-day Tarifa) and Carteia (San Roque). Other sites are a large garum factory at Gades (Cadiz) and at Málaga under the Picasso museum.

Garum was a major export product from Hispania to Rome, and gained the towns a certain amount of prestige. The garum of Lusitania (in present-day Portugal) was also highly prized in Rome, and was shipped directly from the harbour of Lacobriga (Lagos). A former Roman garum factory can be visited in the Baixa area of central Lisbon. Fossae Marianae in 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. Garum factories were also located in the province of Mauretania Tingitana (modern Morocco), for example at Cotta and Lixus.

Umbricius Scaurus' production of garum was key to the economy of Pompeii. The factories where garum was produced in Pompeii have not been uncovered, perhaps indicating that they lay outside the walls of the city. The production of garum created such unpleasant smells that factories were generally relegated to the outskirts of cities. In 2008, archaeologists used the residue from garum found in containers in Pompeii to confirm the August date of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The garum had been made entirely of bogues, fish that congregate in the summer months.

1. Origines 20.3.19; Corcoran, Thomas H. (1963). "Roman Fish Sauces". Classical Journal. 58 (5): 204–210. JSTOR 3295259, citing D'Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (London, 1947), p. 43.
2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Smith1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. Curtis, Robert Irvin (1991). Garum and Salsamenta:Production and Commerce in Materia Medica. Brill. p. 22.
4. Saberi, Helen, ed. (2011). "Roman fish sauce. An experiment in archaeology". Cured, Smoked, and Fermented: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food. Prospect Books, Oxford Symposium, 2011. p. 121. ISBN 9781903018859.
5. Muusers, Christianne. "Recipe for Garum or liquamen, the Roman fish sauce". Coquinaria. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
6. Martial, Epigrams 13.
7. Toussaint-Samat, The History of Food, revised ed. 2009, p. 338f.
8. The Roman Cookery Book, trans. Flower and Rosenbaum, pp. 188–89.
9. Apicius, De Re Coquinaria (Book III, section VIII)
10. ^ Curtis, Robert I (1983) "In Defense of Garum" The Classical Journal, 78 (3): 232–240.
11. Curtis RI (2009) "Umami and the foods of classical antiquity" American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 90 (3): 712S–718S. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2009.27462C
12. Grainger S (2006) "Towards an Authentic Roman Sauce" In: Pages 206–210, Richard Hosking (Ed.) Authenticity in the Kitchen, Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2005. ISBN 9781903018477.
13. Jashemski WMF and Meyer FG (2002) The Natural History of Pompeii Cambridge University Press, page 274. ISBN 9780521800549.
14. Zaret, PM (2004) Liquamen and other fish sauces" Repast, 20 (4) : 3–4 and 8.
15. Aquerreta, Yolanda; Astiasarán, Iciar; Bello, José (2002-01-01). "Use of exogenous enzymes to elaborate the Roman fish sauce 'garum'". Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 82 (1): 107–112. doi:10.1002/jsfa.1013. ISSN 1097-0010.
16. ^ Toussaint-Samat (2009).
17. Borschel-Dan, Amanda (16 December 2019). "Factory for Romans' favorite funky fish sauce discovered near Ashkelon". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2019-12-18.
18. Marshak, Adam (2015). The many faces of Herod the Great. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 179. ISBN 978-0802866059.
19. Harvey, Brian. "Graffiti from Pompeii". Herculaneum. Stamps on jars of garum. 2569: Kosher garum
20. "Gadir archaeological site". spain.info.
21. Millennium bcp Foundation, Rua dos Correeiros 21 Fundação Millennium bcp—Núcleo Arqueológico
22. 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.
23. 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. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. pp. 64–66.
24. Lorenzi, Rossella (2017-05-10). "Fish Sauce Used to Date Pompeii Eruption". Discovery. Archived from the original on November 27, 2012.