There was no single recipe
Talking about “the” Roman garum as though there were one fixed recipe oversimplifies the evidence. Ancient texts and archaeological remains point to different preparations: some used small fish whole; others used fish parts and viscera. The recurring elements were marine raw material, salt and maturation. That variation also matters when reading about my own garum today: it is a contemporary interpretation, not a literal reconstruction.
What the evidence tells us about Roman garum.
Salt was central to the process: it contributed to preservation and shaped the enzymatic and microbial activity that could develop during maturation. Ratios and methods were not identical across every site or period.
Coastal production, salt and maturation
The cetariae — coastal production works with vats — show that this was not merely a domestic curiosity but an organised activity. Warm conditions could influence how the mixtures developed, but the archaeological record points to varied methods and raw materials rather than one protocol for the whole Roman world.
Pliny the Elder gives us a different clue to its status. Writing about garum sociorum, made from mackerel at Carthago Spartaria, he notes that few liquids other than unguents fetched higher prices. It is a comparison of value, not of aroma.
There was no single Roman formula; there was a family of fish sauces built around fish, salt and maturation.
Distribution was local: from the coastal works to the nearest port.
A method that never quite left
Modern condiments such as Italian colatura di alici and several Asian fish sauces share part of that logic: fish, salt, time and the extraction of an intensely savoury liquid. Technical resemblance on its own, however, is not enough to claim a direct line of descent from Roman garum.
What I do in my own kitchen — covered in the previous chapter — is not intended as a historical reconstruction either. I am interested in the culinary principle of transforming fish with salt, time and fermentation, but I work with the raw materials, controls and aims of a contemporary kitchen.
