Roman fish-salting production: vats, sites and products
Roman fish processing ran as a large industry along Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. A vat shows that salting happened, but not that its contents were garum.
· 6 min read
Articles
Source-linked articles on foods, ingredients, traditions and equipment.
Garum intake
Garos: the Greek fish sauce with a famous name and no recipe
Athenian playwrights mentioned garos in the fifth century BCE and the surviving lines never say how it was made. The detailed Greek methods come from a Byzantine compilation more than a thousand years later, with a sauce of tuna blood among them.
· 6 min read
Garum and the many worlds of fish sauce
Garum, nước mắm, nam pla and patis share ways of turning fish into a savoury liquid, yet each belongs to its own food culture. This account follows ancient sauces, Asian and Japanese fish sauces, colatura and koji garums.
· 14 min read
Nine thousand years under clay: the fish pit that may be the oldest fermentation on record
In southern Sweden, a Mesolithic pit packed with fish bones has been read as the earliest known fermentation, made with no salt and no pots. What the evidence shows, how firm the case is, and how it compares with rakfisk.
· 6 min read
Ancient names and types of garum
Garum, liquamen, allec, muria and haimation were different Roman and Greek fish products, and the words never kept one meaning. What the texts, a price list and one buried jar tell us.
· 8 min read
One fish, four decisions: why salted fish becomes sauce here and paste there
Cetara's amber colatura, Thai nam pla, Cambodian prahok and Korean jeotgal all start with fish and salt. A few choices separate them, and the published figures for those choices often disagree.
· 9 min read
A Barley Sauce Rotted in the Sun, and the Fish Sauce of the Gulf
A medieval Arabic recipe turns barley bread into a black seasoning with 40 days of sun. Around the Gulf, salted small fish still become sauce, and laboratories and health ministries now measure it.
· 7 min read
Comparisons that reveal the most about garum
Which comparisons with living fish sauces, grain sauces and fermented fish pastes explain how garum was made, and which ones only look alike.
· 6 min read
Garum and its relatives: a global history of fermented seasonings
Garum sits in a much larger world of seasonings made by turning fish, shellfish, meat, grain or seed into concentrated savoury liquids and pastes. This article sorts that world by method, use and documented history.
· 14 min read