Inside Rome’s Fermented Fish Sauce Market

Marcus Valerius

If you ever find yourself walking down the Argiletum-- the, the narrow street of the booksellers and the shoemakers, right where the Subura valley squeezes down toward the Forum-- you do not look for the sign of the fishmonger. No, you, uh, you follow your nose. Honestly, your nose will find it three blocks before your eyes do. It is a thick, heavy, sharp aroma... a mix of intense, concentrated sea salt, warm clay, and the unmistakable, funky tang of... well, of fermenting fish. To a stranger, it might smell like a dockyard that has been baking in the August sun for a week, but to a Roman? Ah, it makes the mouth water. It is the smell of a proper meal. You step out of the glare of the street into the cool, shadowed interior of a shop, and there they are: rows of tall, slender clay amphorae leaning against the walls, sweating slightly in the shade, filled with the lifeblood of Roman cooking.

Marcus Valerius

Now, I know what you are thinking. Fish guts left to rot in the sun? It sounds like a quick way to meet Orcus in the underworld. But there is a science to it-- a real, precise art. You see, the makers of this liquid gold do not just throw fish in a pile. They take mackerel heads, the intestines, the blood, and they pack them into massive open-air concrete vats down on the coast. And then comes the secret: the salt. It has to be a very specific ratio, roughly eight parts fish to one part salt. That is about twelve percent salinity. If you put too little salt, the whole thing actually rots and becomes a toxic, putrid mess. If you put too much, the salt kills the natural enzymes and nothing happens. But at twelve percent? Ah, the magic happens. The salt stops the harmful bacteria from growing, while the intense heat of our Mediterranean sun activates the natural digestive enzymes in the fish guts themselves. The fish literally liquefies itself over two or three months, turning into a clear, golden-amber fluid. It is not rotting at all; it is a clean, stable, beautiful fermentation.

Marcus Valerius

And just like wine, we Romans are obsessed with the vintage and the brand. You can see it right here on the clay jars in the shop. They have these charcoal-painted labels we call tituli picti, scrawled right onto the neck of the amphora. They tell you exactly what you are getting, who made it, and where it came from. The absolute best-- the stuff the senators pour onto their roasted dormice-- is garum sociorum, imported all the way from the southern coasts of Spain. It is incredibly expensive. And of course, the old-timers in the shop always sigh and whisper about the legendary Campania vintages, the ones made near Pompeii before the great mountain erupted thirty years ago. Those bottles... they say there is nothing left like them in the world.

Marcus Valerius

As I am standing here, admiring the jars, the shopkeeper slides out from the shadows behind the counter. It is Umbricius Abascantus. He is a freedman, a former slave who bought his freedom and now runs this shop as a partner to his former master, the great Pompeian garum tycoon Aulus Umbricius Scaurus. Abascantus has that quick, sharp eye of a man who can tell the weight of the coins in your purse just by the way you walk. He immediately reaches for a tiny, elegant little flask, stoppered with wax. He tells me, "Marcus, my friend, you look like a man of taste. I have just received a shipment of flos scombri-- the 'flower of mackerel' sauce. Pure, first-press, clear as honey, made from nothing but the finest Spanish mackerel. Just two spoonfuls of this on your cabbage, and you will think you are dining with the Emperor Trajan himself!" I look at the price tag scribbled on the neck. It is more than a common laborer makes in a whole day of sweating at the docks. I shake my head. No, not today, Abascantus. Not on my budget.

Marcus Valerius

You see, the garum market is a ladder, and every class in Rome has its own rung. At the very top is that flos scombri. But at the very bottom? Well, once the makers drain off that clear, amber liquid from the vats, what is left? A thick, gray, gritty sludge of fish bones, scales, and partially dissolved mush. We call that allec. It is cheap, salty as the sea, and incredibly pungent. If you walk past the dark, cramped rooms of the insulae tenements at dinnertime, you will smell it. Slaves and poor laborers buy a handful of allec for a copper fraction of an as, and they scrape it onto their stale, hard barley bread. It is salty and fishy enough to mask the taste of mold, to give a man the illusion that he is eating something substantial. It is the great equalizer of the Roman slum.

Marcus Valerius

But I am a man of the middle sort. I do not want the dregs, but I cannot afford the flower. So, I do what every self-respecting Roman does: I haggle. I pull out my own little clay flask-- my urceus-- which I brought from home, and I point to a medium-sized amphora in the corner. I tell Abascantus that his flos scombri is probably cut with river water anyway, and I offer him three copper asses for a fill of muria. Muria is the second-press brine-- salted, fishy, plenty strong, but without the premium price tag. He groans, he rolls his eyes, he swears by the genius of his patron that I am ruining him, but... well, he takes my copper. He pours the dark, salty liquid into my flask. Tonight, when I go home to my small apartment, I will boil a simple pot of puls-- our thick, plain barley porridge. By itself, it is bland, heavy, and tastes like warm cardboard. But with a few drops of this muria stirred in? It becomes savory, deep, and rich. A true Roman feast. Until next time, my friends, eat well and keep your wits about you in the market.