Re: Garum factory in Askhkelon

> While the idea of fermented fish sauce or garum may not spark
> salivation in modern palates, the slimy stuff was considered one of
> the most delicious flavors of the Roman Empire. According to
> Erickson-Gini, the precious goop added both salty and savory flavors
> to food and was used in the vast majority of recipes known from the
> era.
>
> =E2=80=9CI think of it as a condiment, but it went well beyond that,=E2=
=80=9D
> Erickson-Gini said. =E2=80=9CIt=E2=80=99s hard for us to imagine. It was =
far more
> common than ketchup.=E2=80=9D

There's a common thread in articles about garum, 'the ubiquitous odorus
sauce', to wonder with a shudder about how people could possibly have liked
it. And 'slimy' is simply a boo word. But consider Thai cuisine, which
makes wide use of the local fish sauce in dishes whose other ingredients
have nothing to do with seafood. This too is made by fermenting fish with
salt, and the result is a clear liquid with a slightly fishy, gamey odour,
but when added to food its main effect comes from the salt in it, and it's
used in Thai cookery much as we in the west would use crystal salt. In this
it serves the same function in Thailand as soy sauce does in lands farther
east.

So much for high quality refined _liquamen_. What about the lower grade
_allec_? This would have been much fishier and more odorous. But that taste
too is found in much Mediterranean cuisine thanks to salted anchovies,
which appear in relishes such as _tapenade_ and _salsa verde_, and in
dishes such as _pasta alla puttanesca_. In former times, even in the bland
cookery of England, anchovy sauce was a much used ingredient. Around 1800
Sydney Smith wrote a poetic recipe for a salad in which he expressed the
typical fear of the time, smelly onions -- 'Let onion atoms lurk within the
bowl / And, half-suspected, animate the whole' -- but included a good whack
of something much more pungent -- 'And lastly o'er the flavour'd compound
toss / A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce.' (Later editors of the poem have
baulked at the idea of a spoonful, and changed it to 'soup=C3=A7on'. _Tempo=
ra
mutantur._)

The use of fermented fish as a condiment is by no means confined to Europe.
In many parts of Africa where the staple food is tasteless grains and
roots, dried fish, sometimes air dried without salt so that it really
reeks, adds interest. The same is true in India where 'Bombay duck', air
dried strips of a small fish called a _bummalo_, is a popular relish.

Each culture seems happy with its own smelly things, but recoils from those
of others. Sydney Smith would have fainted at the amount of garlic that
moderns happily put in salad dressing. And Americans make a dressing
containing blue cheese that, as a European, I find deeply repulsive but
they lap it up without a care.

RH

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Sydney Smith's 'Recipe for a salad' is given here:
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pedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRhyming_recipe&data=3D02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky=
.edu%7C29ee00b9ec72421953f308d782a3b830%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%=
7C0%7C0%7C637121511990709263&sdata=3DC76fA8aahKIpXKkR1Ls4JhR4Ea1%2FSSm9=
wvKG%2BsBdBio%3D&reserved=3D0