Too bad I can't pick up any silphium or liquamen at the grocery store. Silphium is thought to be extinct and the exact taste and method for producing liquamen is still debated -- though we know it was some sort of fish sauce.
Asafoetida was substituted by the Romans when their supply of African laser (silphium) became unavailable. Liquamen, or at least something very close, can be purchased at oriental foodstores (look for nuoc mam or nan pla). There's even a modern Italian version called colatura.
It's not that unknown. The specific herbs and flavorings probably varied over time and place and those details are lost. But it was certainly a whole-fish amino sauce using the digestive enzymes of the fish themselves, and salt to prevent spoilage. Asian fish sauces are likely a decent substitute.
Plus garums are making a comeback and are already quietly being produced and used in some high end kitchens, based on work published by noma, using koji proteases to speed up the process. You can't quite buy them at the grocery store, and historical authenticity to roman recipes isn't the goal of anyone I know. But there is garum out there if you really really want it.
Anything can be marketed as "garum". The name isn't protected, all it takes is so naming whatever product you have. If our definition is some sort of fish sauce with various unspecified ingredients, then any Asian or other fish sauce is garum.
Exactly. In Roman times, they probably also had endless variations of what they called garum. There wasn't really any food authority. They would likely have used what would have been available to them locally. Mostly that would have been what they grew locally + what they fished out of the Mediterranean + what they could get their hands on via trade.
The recipe probably wasn't set down in stone. Which was of course one of the ways to publish information at the time. But mostly people just copied what other people were doing at the time. There weren't many recipe books/scrolls or literate cooks even. And it sounds like the process of making garum basically involved a lot of rotting fish guts so that doesn't strike me as something as a likely career choice for somebody with an actual education at the time.
So, basically the recipe would have gone something like: take whatever off cuts of fish, fish guts, etc. you have, add salt, and let it do its thing for some time. You get different results based on what fish you use, whatever else you might toss in (herbs, spices, etc), how long you let things ferment, etc. Probably all those variants would have been considered garum. Probably a lot of trial and error involved to get that right. That's also more or less how Asian fish sauces work.
Agreed but to use a modern analogy, while there are thousands of variants of kimchi, none of them taste like sauerkraut.
Lots of seemingly minor details can make a big difference in cooking. From the Asian sauces for example I know it even makes a difference what fish species is used. It's possible that there are fish sauces out on the market that are similar or even essentially the same as variants that were used in Ancient Rome but we don't know this.
It isn't available yet, but they rediscovered what appears to be silphium in 2022. It checks all the boxes. It's a slow-growing plant, but they have started trying to propagate it.
There’s a YouTube series where an amateur cook re-creates recipes from various historical periods. Tasting History with Max Miller is definitely worth a watch: https://m.youtube.com/@TastingHistory/videos
He’s very up-front about the liberties that he has to take with historical recipes, as often times they don’t include things like quantities.
He also covers substitutions, as a number of ingredients are simply impossible to come by in the modern era.
> I hear they call the quarterpounder with cheese a REGIVS CVM CAESVS.
CVM CASEO.
Though I don't know to what degree it would make sense to translate an English with-phrase using the Latin preposition "with". A quick check of the dictionary suggests you might want something more like REGIVS CASEARIVS.
Fun fact: the Spanish word quesadilla means "cheesed [thing]". The components of the word are ques- [cheese] -ad- [passive participial ending, like the -en of taken] -ill- [diminutive form, like using doggie instead of dog] -a [feminine ending]. It seems to be common to create food words from participles like this; enchilada has the same form ["chile-ed"].
Did not know that about “quesadilla“! Made me think about the fact that you’ll often hear Latino food service workers (only dudes in my experience, come to think of it) refer to “burro” instead “burrito”, thus reversing the diminutive.
Interesting there's only one recipe with (wheat) flour, whereas today's desserts almost always include flour, plus copious amounts of sugars (but processed sugar didn't exist until the 10th century, so that part is understandable).
This is fun, really appreciate the share. My son is heading to Rome to study as he wraps up culinary school, and he loves food history. I'm always looking for things to learn about with him.
