The universal condiment in the ancient world, a staple of Roman, Greek and Byzantine cuisines, was garum. Garum was manufactured in enormous quantities and shipped in special amphorae all over the civilized, colonized universe. What is garum? It's a fishy sauce that any sensible modern apple-pie-loving American would avoid at all costs. Trust me, you would not want to slaver your bacon cheeseburger with garum.
To make garum, the innards -- the guts -- of fish (whitebait, anchovies, mackerel, tuna, etc.) were stacked between layers of salt and herbs and left in the sun for several months. Honest to Pete!! The result, which must have been malodorous and horrid, was then strained and bottled, or rather, poured into amphorae for transport.
Don't believe me? Here's a direct quotation from a 10th century Byzantine manual: "the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and are salted; and small fish especially atherinae, or maenae or lycostomi are seasoned in the sun, and frequently turned; and when they have been seasoned in the heat, the garum is thus taken from them. A small basket of close texture is laid in the vessel filled with the small fish already mentioned, and the garum will flow into the basket." Sounds dreadful, you must admit. And I don't even know, and I don't know that anyone knows, exactly what sort of monsters of the deep are designated by the words atherinae and lycostomi.
Here's a picture of a ruined garum factory in Baelo Claudia in Spain. The remains of such factories can be found all over the Mediterranean world. I myself have toured one near Pompeii. Garum factories were set as far as possible from centers of population because they, er, stunk.
Garum was the ancients' ketchup. What could they have been thinking?
Strange to say, there's a etymological link between ancient fish sauce and modern ketchup. In the 1600s, there existed a Chinese concoction that was called, depending on the dialect, akôe-chiap or kê-chiap, guī zhī, or gwai zap; all these apparently translated as "the brine of pickled fish." By the early 18th century, the sauce had arrived in the present day region of Malaysia and Singapore, where it came to the attention of hungry, hardened English colonists.The Malay word for the sauce was kicap (pronounced "kay-chap"). English settlers took kay-chap with them to the American colonies.
But kay-chap was a long way from our familiar ketchup. The commonest kay-chap of the 18th century was not tomato but mushroom based. Tomato ketchup was a mid-19th century invention -- the first recipe for "Tomata Catsup" appearing in 1812. Ketchup was popular long before fresh tomatoes because tomatoes were thought to be dangerous and possibly poisonous. A man named Jonas Yerkes is thought to be the first American to sell tomato ketchup in a bottle. But his initiative was overtaken and displaced by the 1876 ketchup launched by Henry Heinz. Heinz still controls 60% of the ketchup market.
Most of the world's Heinz tomato ketchup is made in the main U.S. plant at Fremont, Ohio (home town of President Rutherford B. Hayes).
I imagine that the air in Fremont, Ohio is ketchupy, which is a heck of a lot better than if it were garumy.
Ketchup was not used in my family of origin. It was a revelation when, a Brooklyn youth, I first discovered ketchup, along with french fries, in a local delicatessen. It's been a staple of my diet ever since. Garum, not so much. Nor salsa, an emerging contemporary competitor.
I'm happy that I live in a post-garum world.
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