It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen).

I can now confirm it was under the supervision of Sally Grainger, world's leading authority on the subject, author of The Story of Garum.
Here's how I did it...
🐟🧵
I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal)
Then I added salt, "Pope's Salt" from Cervia in #Italy, but any sea salt will do: 20% of the weight of the fish, or 77 grams. #garum
Then I added the salt to the fish after a couple of cuts with a sharp knife to expose the viscera...
Challenge was replicating Mediterranean summer temperatures in Canadian climate.
Solution: (suggested by @fmedeats, cheers!) Use seedling mat with a thermostat.
The ideal temperature turned out to be around 31 degrees C.
Then I put the salted sardines in a Mason jar (Kilner jar to those in the UK), closed it, and put it on top of seedling in one of those insulated Coleman camping coolers to maintain a constant temperature. Put the cooler in a corner of the apartment...
Within only a few days, the enzymes in the sardines' viscera liquefied the flesh. No water or brine was added—the fish just digested themselves.
Ancient recipes call for 3 months' fermentation (in open vats, under the Mediterranean sun); modern Asian fish sauces are fermented for 12 months+. I let mine go for about 3.5 months, with shakes of the jar every couple of days to keep everything mixed.
So this is what the sardines were reduced to after 3.5 months of fermentation: a creamy slurry with bones and scales visible. Question is whether the salt has prevented any toxins (botulism, anyone?) from developing.
I invested in a jelly strainer ($15 at the local kitchen store). And poured the mess into the fine mesh. Best done on the front porch—when the kids were at school! There's already been a lot of "Ewww! Gross!" over this experiment.
Sally Grainger suggested I rebrine the solids for a week to squeeze a "second extraction." I've done that, and got an equal volume of liquid out of it. Common practice among value-conscious garum merchants in 1st cent CE, apparently.
The resulting liquid—which the Romans more often called "liquamen" than "garum"—is very similar in colour to this colatura, an Italian sauce made from the drippings of salted anchovies. Colatura, though, isn't fermented (the fish are gutted before salting).
Grainger told me the colour—a coruscating gold—was perfect. The smell is somewhere between colatura and Vietnamese nuoc mam. Intensely fishy, but not off-putting.
And I tasted it—and it was great! Salty up front, but with deep-down umami. As good as the reconstructed Flor de Garum I had in Spain, better than most Asian fish sauces. I've been using it in French onion soup, puttanesca sauce, Roman patina (below)—and my kids seem to love it!
Liquamen/garum's synergy with Ferula drudeana, the presumed Silphion plant, is remarkable, as our experiments in cooking with recipes from Apicius in #Istanbul showed.
For more on garum, see my feature in @SmithsonianMag

smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/r…
For more on presumed Silphion, see my feature here:
cc: @NatGeoMag @natgeo

nationalgeographic.com/history/articl…
And apologies to those who already saw the original thread; re-posting b/c of new interest.
Pro-tip: don't make Garum/Liquamen with crickets.

Not actually Garum, but Fermented Nordic Bug Sauce.
The distinction between Liquamen and Silphion is we have organic remains of the former in sealed amphorae recovered from Pompeii's Garum Shop. We have no such remains of Silphion. I ran an inscriptions search for laser / silphium / laserpithium, came up with nothing.
But a Silphion amphora might be yet found at the bottom of the Med.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚂𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛 📘

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚂𝚞𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛 📘 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @lostsupper

Feb 9
We succeeded in recreating Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic. 🍞🧵
I should start from the beginning. I went to the Çatalhöyük site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE.
Image
Image
In the excavations, I saw the placement of the beehive-shaped ovens and the storage bins that almost every dwelling had. Helpfully, replica houses showed exactly what these looked like.
Image
Image
Read 30 tweets
Feb 5
Why has olive oil suddenly become a luxury item?

Since I took this photo, in a supermarket on #Italy's Lago di Garda, prices have doubled, sometimes tripled.

Reasons: drought. Bad storms at harvest time. In some areas, a labour shortage.

But another tragedy is happening... 🧵 Image
It's a bacteria that's sickening trees in the south of #Italy. Some of those that are dying are monumentali, thousands of years old...
Image
Image
The disease, Xylella fastidiosa, is spread by the sputacchina, or spittlebug, and causes the tree's canopies to blacken and wither. Image
Read 7 tweets
Feb 2
It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen)—the ancient Roman fish sauce

To avoid botulism, I did it under the supervision of Sally Grainger, the British author of The Story of Garum. Some of the key steps...
🐟 Image
I started with small, whole sardines, purchased frozen and then left to thaw (from a Portuguese grocery in #Montreal) Image
It was necessary to make couple of cuts to the salted fish with a sharp knife to expose the viscera, permitting the process of autolysis to occur... Image
Read 15 tweets
Sep 29, 2023
The disappearance of silphion is one of the great mysteries of food history. The plant's resin was a secret flavor enhancer, like garum, and worth its weight in silver. But it vanished 2,000 years ago—Nero was said to have eaten the last stalk.
We think we've found it...🌼🧵

Image
Image
Image
Not to boast, but I do believe that I was the first person from west of the Bosphorus Straits to have tasted Silphion in 2,000 or so years when I chewed on the (pleasantly bitter) resin from the root-ball on the flanks of an extinct volcano.
OK, kind of boasting...
Image
Image
I'm telling the story in a multi-part dispatch on my Lost Supper Substack. You can find it here: Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 1, 2022
We succeeded in recreating a Neolithic flatbread!

This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. I’ll let you judge the authenticity…but the taste is fantastic.
Bread thread 🍞🧵 follows...
I should start from the beginning. A year ago, I went to the Çatalhöyük site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE. ImageImage
Read 42 tweets
Sep 26, 2022
Silphion in #Paris!

You can see the Arcesilas Cup, in the medals room of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

6th-cent. BC Spartan vase thought to show Cyrenaican king, and workers weighing silphion in scales for transport across the Mediterranean. Image
Some scholars dispute this, say wool is being weighed on the scales. The white oblongs have been interpreted as silphion resin mixed with bran to stabilize the product for shipping. Monkeys, parrots, lizards suggest African setting. Image
For more on the history of Silphion, lost herb of the ancients, see my @NatGeoMag feature: nationalgeographic.com/history/articl…
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(