SC - Lady Seaton's Project

[Philip & Susan Troy]

david friedman wrote:
> 
> At 12:22 PM -0500 3/18/00, Elaine Koogler wrote:
> 
> >One other pitfall is the fact that recipes, particularly in Apicius
> >and Platina,
> >as well as other sources, call for liquamen or "garum".  As this is a type of
> >fish sauce, it cannot be consumed by vegetarians.
> 
> So far as I know, Apicius is the only period cookbook that calls for
> this ingredient
<snip>
> 
> Do you know of any post-roman cookbooks that use garum?

Anthimus calls for something that may or may not be garum in his afrutum
recipe; different texts use different words and it is open to a fair
amount of interpretation, but Mark Grant, as well as a couple of other
editors/translators, seems to feel it is some garum derivative such as
oxygarum (garum cut with vinegar) or hydrogarum (garum cut with water).
Most often the term appears as something like "egro~ario". Grant's
translated term is "diluted fish-sauce".

This is only one recipe. In another, I believe one for sucking-pig,
Anthimus states that he forbids the use of fish sauce in any way.
Whether this is a general proscription or one specifically connected
with sucking-pig is unclear. My inclination is that this would suggest
something other than garum is what Anthimus calls for in the afrutum
recipe, but on the other hand, if garum was not known or used among the
Franks at the time, why bother to forbid it?

In addition, we have it on the authority of Luidprandt of Cremona that
the Byzantines seasoned their dishes with "a vile, fishy liquid". 
  
And in the "I have no blinkin' hard evidence" department, it was
suggested somewhere recently (maybe the Apicius list?) that muria, a
known Roman garum variant (I'm not sure which one it is, maybe the
version made with gutted fish, or maybe just fish innards instead of
whole fish) is related both in name and process to murri. Do we know
where murri comes from? Could it be a vegetarian version of a fish
sauce? Considering that soy sauce is exactly that, it makes a bit of
sense. That, of course, doesn't make it true.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com