SC - Early Period A&S Entries

[Philip & Susan Troy]

ChannonM at aol.com wrote:
> 
> What happens is that the fish liquefy over time as the coarse salt melts and
> a thick lumpy brine is formed.  This is then strained either finely or
> coarsely depending on the use it is intended for

According to Pliny (admittedly only one source) clear brine (hence the
term liquamen) is siphoned off from the solids, which are used as an
entirely different product called halec. 

> Italian regional cuisine is very ancient in its origins, many dishes that are
> eaten today in Rome on the tables of the ordinary citizens and in the Roman
> campagna (not the restaurants which barring a few exceptions are bastardized
> and atypical) bear a great resemblance to those eaten by the ordinary
> citizens of Rome two millennia ago.  Certainly new ingredients have been
> added (mostnotably the tomato and chilli pepper) as they have been discovered
> over the
> centuries but the basic style of the food remains the same.  The crux of the
> matter is this; if garum was indeed as essential an ingredient in Roman
> cuisine
> as we are told by ancient texts then it is very likely that it would remain
> in the Roman diet in some prominent form today (much as soy sauce and Nuoc mam
> being very ancient still feature prominently in the far east).  The fact that
> Italy has no Nuoc mam type sauce today nor has it had in living memory leads
> me
> to conclude that garum cannot have been a sauce like nuoc mam or it would
> remain in use today; not just in Italy but in Spain, Greece and North
> Africa,it is simply impossible for such an important ingredient to have
> disappeared
> from all of these countries without trace.

Actually, it hasn't. One very halec-like paste that is very common in
the south of France is pissalat. Another consideration is that as Rome
is not really a seaport, it's unlikely a center of manufacture for garum
would develop there. On the Mediterranean coastlines of what are now
Spain, France, Italy and Greece, you'll find what seem to be remains of
garum factories.

I wonder if there was somje kind of climactic or other shift in the
migrations of some of the fish traditionally used in the manufacture of
liquamen, which might explain why the fish so prepared seemed to be
growing smaller over time, leading perhaps to the modern salted anchovy.
Which, by the way, is not necessarily a moist product packed in oil, you
can still find them in barrels in France, whole, dry, and packed in
salt. Many recipes written before the 1960s have complete instructions
on how to desalt and fillet anchovies. Other possibilities might include
a dearth of garum-suitable fish, due to overfishing, and then there was
this thing called the Fall of The Roman Empire. Modern citizens of Rome
also don't speak Latin, wear togas, or demand that Carthage be
destroyed. That doesn't mean they never did these things. This is simply
an area where there's been sufficient change that a thread of cultural
identity has been cut. Just as there are modern languages closer in
pronunciation and form to Latin than modern Italian, there are other
places that used to be part of the Roman world that probably have closer
ties to the culture of ancient Rome than Rome itself now does, some even
that have never been successively invaded and ruled by Visigoths,
Lombards and Normans. Oh, my!

One place, by the way, that garum appears to have survived into the
early Middle Ages at least is Byzantium. There's a wonderfully plaintive
passage in the writings of Luidprandt, Bishop of Cremona (vaguely
Carolingian) concerning his treatment as a not-especially-welcome envoy
to the Byzantine Court. He arrived to escort a Byzantine princess back
north to wed the Holy Roman/Frankish emperor, and was, among other
indignities, left standing outisde the gates in the rain for several
days. Finally he was allowed into the city, and was fed what may have
been a typical Byzantine upper-class meal. He describes it as "...foul
and stinking, soused in oil like some drunkard's slops, and the whole
sprinkled with some vile fishy liquid." This would have been ~9th-10th
centuries C.E.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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