Ancient Roman Garum Factory Found in Israel, Suitably Far Away From Town

Ha'aretz ^ | December 16, 2019 | Ruth Schuster

[SunkenCiv]

A factory to make Roman fish sauce about 2,000 years ago has been found in Ashkelon -- about 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) outside the ancient city.

The location of the vats on the southern city's outskirts shores up the supposition that the fish sauce, called garum, had to be manufactured out of town because the process was an olfactory abomination.

The fish farms that provided the raw material for this ancient industry were no joy to live next to either, it seems.

Being a reeking concoction that begins with drying fish guts and then a fermentation stage, adding spice and serving, it is no wonder its production was kept afar from residential areas...

"This is a rare find in our region and very few installations of this kind have been found in the Eastern Mediterranean," says Tali Erickson-Gini from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"Ancient sources even refer to the production of Jewish garum," she adds. "The discovery of this kind of installation in Ashkelon evinces that the Roman tastes that spread throughout the empire were not confined to dress but also included dietary habits."

...Garum seems to go back over 2,500 years to ancient Greek and Phoenician cuisine. They shipped it in the same type of clay vessel (an amphora) that they used for wine and olive oil, and one theory posits that the noun itself derived from the Greek word for shrimp -- sounds like garida.

If anything, modern epidemiologists suspect garum of spreading tapeworms hosted in fish throughout the Roman Empire, including to areas where fish were unknown. To be clear, if you eat an uncooked fish contaminated with cysts of Diphyllobothrium latum -- i.e., the fish tapeworm -- you get the worm.

[Army Air Corps]

Most of today's 'brown' steak sauce is made with fish sauce, notice the anchovies on the ingredients list.

Yes. Worcestershire sauce, A-1 Steak Sauce, and others use anchovies.

[SunkenCiv]

If memory serves, there was a fish sauce factory (I think the very estate which gave garum its name) east of Pompeii, inland, in a rural area, that got buried in the eruption in 79 AD. When excavated, the ceramic vessels still had fish bones in them, and the smell of fermented fish.

http://www.google.com/search?q=garum+factory+east+of+pompeii

[wildcard_redneck]

Turning sugar beets into sugar isn’t a good smell either. Billings Montana in the wintertime reeks of the smell of sugar beet processing.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Umami!

The old ones liked the umami; never mind a tapeworm or ten.

Gotta get the MSG somehow.

[Grimmy]

I wonder...

Is fermented sauce of fish a possible indicator of global trade? Or at least steady trade contact between the Mediterranean area and eastern continental Asia?

A Garum to Nuoc Cham/Nuoc Mam connection?

[wardaddy]

And tamarind

[DUMBGRUNT]

And tamarind

When our USMC Infantry son was in training, no packages allowed.
I took tamarindo (Mexican tamarind candy) rolled thin and inserted inside letters...so he could receive a bit of flavor from the outside world.

Thank you for the reminder!

[SunkenCiv]

There was seagoing trade with continental reach (the Romans knew the orangutan, used pepper, imported goods and even labor from India, etc; a Roman delegation from the time of Marcus Aurelius is recorded in the Han Court records). Whether it was a matter of independent invention or one end or the other spreading the idea, we may never find out.

[NFHale]

“Garum”...

Translated from the Old Roman (not to be confused with Middle Roman, which is hardly ever used anymore) -

Noun - “That sound your butt makes when the fish sauce decides it’s time to leave your body...like immediately... like urgently... like get-the-hell-outta-my-way-to-the-toilet urgently...

[TXnMA]

Aaaaah! Fish sauce!

The owner of our favorite Thai restaurant is a cute little lady -- with whom I have an ongoing contest. She knows I love her "secret" hot sauce -- and she keeps on trying to make it too "hot" (spicy) for me.

Last time I was there, she personally served me a fresh dish of her "special sauce" -- and it was great! At the end of the meal, she came out to see how I'd fared with her sauce. So, I praised it highly, and then, picked up the dish -- and took a healthy sip.

Her eyes opened widely, and, she exclaimed, "This time, I put Ghos' Peppah in him!"

TXnMA     ;-)
  

[Army Air Corps]

It seems that a LOT of cultures around the world have some kind of rotten fish item in their cuisine. Many of the tribes in Canada and Alaska have a food item that is either fermented fish or a sauce made from it. In various Scandinavian cultures one finds several fermented fish items. The same goes for Asia where many cultures have either a fish sauce or fermented fish dish. It seems to be a good way to add sodium and some flavor to you diet.

[Grimmy]

Wow. Them Roman traders really got around!

[Army Air Corps]

I think that fermented fish may be a very ancient part of the human diet. To me, it seems like and offshoot of methods used for preserving meat (especially salted meat). My guess is that some ancient human decided that if salting was good for meat, then it MUST be good for fish. Then, the idea spread from there.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Pompeii proves Romans had oranges from southern China. Its all about the money the traders could make. The ancients were far more clever than we think. What about those Egyptian mummies with cocaine?

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

mam nem is like 1000 angry skunks to nouc mam’s smelly armpit.

I too like nouc mam... mam nem on the other hand... that is beyond rank and putrid.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

( I once dropped a full liter bottle of mam nem on a tile kitchen floor and it shattered into a million pieces. We almost had to move. Nothing got the smell out. Not bleach. Not enzymes. Not blow torching the tile floor. It smelled for a year.)

[Texan5]

Interesting-how are you going to contain the smell of curing/drying and fermentation-if you live in a city/burb? If you live in the boonies every bear for miles will be attracted by it, too...

Being country-bred and of Hispanic ancestry, there are very few food items I won’t eat-I’m fond of grilled rattlesnake, fried mountain oysters, barbacoa and huevos con sesos for breakfast...

But at the top of my gag-me food list is fish sauce-both my 1st hubby and MrT5 developed a taste for it while in the military-MrT5 was especially fond of the Thai fish sauce from the local Oriental grocery, and was amused every time I’d eat at the breakfast island when he’d bring a bottle of it to the table to put on his food-the smell of that Thai stuff could gag a hungry bear, so I can just imagine how Roman Garum reeked...

My guy moved to the city long before we got together and he forgot smells we don’t mind out here in BFE-from the smell of livestock to the aroma of cooking certain Hispanic foods-he does not come out to my place if I’m going to be cooking menudo, which I love-if I served him fish sauce, I’d probably be arrested for murder by poison...

[no-s]

dropped a full liter bottle of mam nem on a tile kitchen floor [...] Nothing got the smell out.

That's what happens when you don't seal your floors, heheh. Don't let the grout go without resealing.

[Army Air Corps]

I agree on the nam mem. Pee-yewwww.

[no-s]

Personally, I love nước mắm.

Me too. they've started to look at me funny in the Vietnamese restaurant when I order my noodles on the side and dowse them in uncut nước mắm. "That's not Vietnamese!" exclaims the cook. "Too much salt," she says. I tell her I like it Thai style. We keep two different kinds in stock at home. I like the Thai chiles in fish sauce too, especially for breakfast atop my omelet, my savory oatmeal, or atop chilaquiles with the nopalitos. I'm gaining weight just thinking about it.

With the Roman practice of putting pine tree in everything, I have to wonder whether the tapeworms were truly spread that way.