Re: Cookbook relay

>
> En réponse à John Cowan :
>
> >
> > Ah, garum.
> >
>
> That's it! I knew it couldn't be a difficult name. Did it disappear all along or
> does it have relexes in the Romance languages? (I can't think of any in French
> though).
>
    No reflex to my knowledge. The word comes from the greek form,
garos, which was originally the name of a specific fish.

    The sauce was also called liquamen and muries... under this form it
occurs in the Talmud, though I am unclear on the direction of the
borrowing (it would be hardly unheard of for the Talmud to contain a
Latin word, on the other hand Horace claims that the Latin form comes
from the "Syrian language"... see See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Apicius/message/1334  )

    Note also that despite what its ancient critics might have said,
garum was not made from rotten fish, or at least what happened to the
fish was not rotting by the modern chemical definition ;)

    For an interesting and detailed treatment of all these topics, see
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/8337/c_garum.html



>
>  > This is also ancestral to ketchup/catsup (Minnan Chinese "ke tsiap");
>  > the
>  > Americans removed the rotten fish and added tomato paste.
>  >
>
> Really? I didn't know ketchup had such a grandiose ancestor :) . Beurk! I hate
> ketchup. But I do like a good tomato sauce.
>
BEURK! I was just saying that the other day and no one knew what I
meant. Anyway, despite being American I don't generally like ketchup
either, but then I only like good tomato sauce in excellent italian
food.

    Anyway, most people I've talked to hate the concept of fish sauce
and hate many of the smells of Roman cuisine (they also liked what is
now called asafoetida which, as you can tell by its name, STINKS), but
once it's made they forget the smell and eat it ravenously!


IVSTINVS