[Sca-cooks] Brown Sauce vs. Garum vs Nuoc Mam

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>The source of Roman brown sauce
>By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
>(Filed: 01/02/2002)
>A SET of Roman fish tanks that may have been used to produce a pungent sauce
>enjoyed by the wealthy citizens of Pompeii has been uncovered by British
>archaeologists.
>The six tanks, unearthed on a commercial street at the edge of the city, may
>have been used to make garum, the Roman elite's equivalent of brown sauce.

You would think an educated Englishman, and one who writes even
occasionally about food, would know that there's absolutely no
resemblance whatever between what in most of the English-speaking
world is known as "brown sauce" and garum or liquamen. Brown sauce is
usually, or at least used to be, the English term for sauces like
espagnole, a thickened, concentrated sauce made from brown stock.
Unless the brown sauce reference was to the ubiquity of garum, rather
than its production and use.

>An intact skeleton of a sardine-like fish and a collection of fish bones
>were found at the bottom of one of the tanks by a team from Bradford
>University.
>Production of garum was big business and from the first century BC to the
>end of the Roman period the sauce was produced in large salting plants in
>many cities. The condiment was made by leaving fish to rot in salted water.

Bzzzzzt! Culinary xenophobia strikes again. "Rot"? What, no
"fermentation"??? Everybody knows garum is "fermented", don't they?
(The primary process involves enzymatic breakdown, and is neither
fermentation nor rotting, although a lactic fermentation occurs in
the production of some fish sauces, but without the enzymatic
breakdown there would be no sauce to ferment.) Most garum recipes
involve stacking the fish in a vat, with salt. As with many cured
pork products, it produced its own brine, which is a bit different
from "leaving [it] to rot in salted water".

>The tanks measure about three feet deep and 18in wide and date to the second
>century BC. They were abandoned and covered long before Vesuvius smothered
>Pompeii with ash in AD79.
>Dr Rick Jones, a member of the team that found the tanks between the remains
>of Roman shops and bars, believes that they may have been used to make
>garum, or to store live fish before being sold at market.
>"In this part of Pompeii we are dealing with some of the richest people,"
>said Dr Jones.
>"Because fish rots so quickly it becomes expensive. It was the food of the
>rich, and the Pompeians had pictures on their walls of the fish species they
>were actually eating.

I didn't know live fish rotted... maybe it only fermented. While
perishability is an issue in the price of fish, so is transport,
season, demand, etc., and basing an economic analysis of an entire
industry on a misemphasis on rot is likely to lead to some inaccurate
conclusions.

>"To find a complete fish together like this is exciting. It means we can
>move on a step in understanding what people were actually doing in the
>city."
>A chemical analysis of the concrete-like lining should reveal whether the
>tanks were used to make the sauce or store live fish. The team is building
>up a picture of the social background of Pompeii's citizens.
>They have found evidence that social inequality was increasing sharply from
>the first century BC.

Gee, right around the time Rome stopped being a Republic and became,
effectively, a hereditary monarchy. Who'd have thought there'd be
social inequality?

It hasn't been my experience in the past that scientists don't pick
up a very basic history book before announcing their findings, but
this bunch seems unusually cloistered with regard to details of Roman
life.

Adamantius

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