Garum

Garum was a fermented fish sauce used as a condiment[1] in the cuisines of Phoenicia,[2] ancient Greece, Rome, Carthage and later Byzantium. Liquamen was a similar preparation, and at times they were synonymous. Although garum enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Western Mediterranean and the Roman world, it was earlier used by the Greeks.[3][4]

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

Ruins of a garum factory in Baelo Claudia in Spain

Like the modern fermented soy product soy sauce, fermented garum is a rich source of umami flavoring due to the presence of glutamates.[5] It was used along with murri in medieval Byzantine and Arab cuisine to give a savory flavor to dishes.[6] Murri may well derive from garum.[7]

Manufacture and export

Ancient Roman garum factory in Portugal

Making of liquamen

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.

– from the 10th century Byzantine manual Geōponika: Agricultural pursuits, Vol. II, pp. 299–300; translated from the Greek by Thomas Owen; London 1806.

Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville derive the Latin word garum from the Greek γαρός (garos),[8] a food named by Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Garos may have been a type of fish, or a fish sauce similar to garum.[9] 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).[10][9] A concentrated garum evaporated down to a thick paste with salt crystals was called muria;[11] it would have been used to salt and flavor foods.[12]

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[13]—was apparently mild and subtle in flavor. The best garum fetched extraordinarily high prices,[14] 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.[15]

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.[16] 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.[17][18][19][20] In most surviving tituli picti inscribed on amphorae, where the fish ingredient is shown, the fish is mackerel.[16] Under the best conditions, the fermentation process took about 48 hours.[21]

Garum amphorae from Pompeii

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.[22] Although it was a staple of the Roman Empire's cuisine, few production sites were known to exist in the Eastern Mediterranean until a small 1st-century factory was discovered near Ashkelon in 2019.[23]

Pliny the Elder spoke of a type of garum that Roman Jews may have used, as normal garum would not have been considered kosher.[24]

In the ruins of Pompeii, jars were found containing kosher garum,[25] 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".[22] 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)[26] 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.[27] 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.[28]

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.[29]

Cuisine

Mosaic depicting a "Flower of Garum" jug with a titulus reading "from the workshop of [the garum importer Aulus Umbricius] Scaurus"[30]

When mixed with wine (oenogarum, a popular Byzantine sauce), vinegar, black pepper, or oil, garum enhances the flavor of a wide variety of dishes, including boiled veal and steamed mussels, even pear-and-honey soufflé. Diluted with water (hydrogarum) it was distributed to Roman legions. Pliny (d. 79) remarked in his Natural History that it could be diluted to the colour of honey wine and drunk.[31]

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).[16] 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.[16]

The biological anthropologist Piers Mitchell suggests that garum may have helped spread fish tapeworms across Europe.[32]

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.[33]

Legacy

Garum remains of interest to food historians and chefs, and has been reintroduced into modern food preparation. In Southeast Asia, fish sauce is a distinctive element of that region's cuisine, used similarly as garum was in Rome.[34] In Cádiz, Spain, in 2017, one chef used its flavors for a fish salad recipe, after Spanish archaeologists found evidence of garum in amphoras recovered in the ruins of Pompeii, dating to 79 AD.[35]

Garum is believed to be the ancestor of the fermented anchovy sauce colatura di alici, still produced in Campania, Italy.[34]

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 origins, culinary functions and popularity with garum.[9]

See also

• List of ancient dishes and foods
• List of fish sauces – Wikipedia list article
• Fermented fish

References

1. (R. Zahn), Real-Encyclopaedia der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. "Garum", 1st Series 7 (1912) pp. 841–849.
2. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-ancient-roman-garum-factory-found-in-israel-suitably-far-away-from-town-1.8269538
3. Miles, Richard. Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. Penguin, 2011.
4. Downie, David. "A Roman Anchovy's Tale." Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 25-28.
5. Lewicka, Paulina (2011-08-25). Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean. p. 296. ISBN 9789004194724.
6. Perry, Charles (October 31, 2001), "The Soy Sauce That Wasn't", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 21 March 2009
7. Davidson, Alan; Saberi, Helen; McGee, Harold (2002). The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: Twenty Years of the Best Food Writing from the Journal Petits Propos Culinaires. Ten Speed Press. pp. 358–360. ISBN 978-1-580-08417-8.
8. 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.
9. Smith, Andrew F. (1998). "From Garum to Ketchup. A Spicy Tale of Two Fish Sauces". In Walker, Harlan (ed.). Fish: Food from the Waters. Oxford Symposium. pp. 299–306. ISBN 978-0-907325-89-5.
10. Curtis, Robert Irvin (1). [oogle.com/books/edition/Garum_and_Salsamenta/p2d9DwAAQBAJ Garum and Salsamenta:Production and Commerce in Materia Medica] Check |url= value (help). Brill. p. 22. Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. 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.
12. Muusers, Christianne. "Recipe for Garum or liquamen, the Roman fish sauce". Coquinaria. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
13. Martial, Epigrams 13.
14. Toussaint-Samat, The History of Food, revised ed. 2009, p. 338f.
15. The Roman Cookery Book, trans. Flower and Rosenbaum, pp. 188–89.
16. Curtis, Robert I (1983) "In Defense of Garum" The Classical Journal, 78 (3): 232–240.
17. 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
18. 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.
19. Jashemski WMF and Meyer FG (2002) The Natural History of Pompeii Cambridge University Press, page 274. ISBN 9780521800549.
20. Zaret, PM (2004) Liquamen and other fish sauces" Repast, 20 (4) : 3–4 and 8.
21. 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.
22. Toussaint-Samat (2009).
23. Borschel-Dan, Amanda (16 December 2019). "Factory for Romans' favorite funky fish sauce discovered near Ashkelon". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2019-12-18.
24. Marshak, Adam (2015). The many faces of Herod the Great. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 179. ISBN 978-0802866059.
25. Harvey, Brian. "Graffiti from Pompeii". Herculaneum. Stamps on jars of garum. 2569: Kosher garum
26. "Gadir archaeological site". spain.info.
27. Millennium bcp Foundation, Rua dos Correeiros 21 Fundação Millennium bcp—Núcleo Arqueológico
28. 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.
29. Lorenzi, Rossella (2017-05-10). "Fish Sauce Used to Date Pompeii Eruption". Discovery. Archived from the original on November 27, 2012.
30. G(ari) F(los) SCOM(bri) SCAURI EX OFFI(ci)NA SCAURI, from Pompeii
31. Pliny, Historia Naturalis 13.93.
32. Mitchell, Piers D. (2017). "Human parasites in the Roman World: health consequences of conquering an empire". Parasitology. 144 (1): 48–58. doi:10.1017/S0031182015001651. PMID 26741568.
33. Curtis, Robert I. (1984). "Salted Fish Products in Ancient Medicine". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 39 (4): 430–445. doi:10.1093/jhmas/39.4.430. JSTOR 24633198. PMID 6389686.
34. Prichep, Deena (26 October 2013). "Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again". NPR. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
35. Valeri, Salvatore; Bika, Koldo (12 October 2017). "The ancient condiment that came back from the dead". BBC. Retrieved 14 October 2017.

Further reading

• Grout, James. Garum, part of the Encyclopædia Romana