[Sca-cooks] Smithsonian article on garum

pixel pixel at hundred-acre-wood.com
Tue Nov 2 08:55:45 PDT 2021


"Modern" fish sauces (Thai, Vietnamese,etc.) also smell like fish-based wet
cat food.

Margaret (who has not tried wet cat food of any sort, but the cat was
REALLY interested the last time I used fish sauce)

On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 10:05 AM Joel Lord <jpl at ilk.org> wrote:

> The product they are selling based on this work is available on Amazon,
> my bottle got here a few days ago.  We have not yet tried it in food,
> but it smells like fish-based wet cat food, and a toothpick dipped in
> for a taste tastes just like it smells.  It it a massive punch of umami,
> and used in moderation I'm hoping it's not just cat food.
>
> -Joel
>
> On 10/31/2021 8:10 AM, Sandra J. Kisner wrote:
> > It gets off to a bad start, using phrases like " And garum hardly sounds
> like something that would tempt 21st-century taste buds. Many recipes that
> survive from antiquity call for allowing fish to putrefy in open vats under
> the Mediterranean sun for up to three months" and " for most scholars, the
> lesson of garum (pronounced gah-room) has been that the past inhabited by
> Roman gourmands-known to eat sow udders, ostrich brains and roasted dormice
> rolled in honey-was an unimaginably foreign country."  It does get better,
> however.  Whether it's good I'll leave to those who know more about the
> period than I do.
> >
> >
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/recoving-the-recipe-for-garum-180978846/
> >
> > Sandra
>
>


More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list