Red Tuna Garum Flower ancient Roman sauce 100ml

Garum, the Roman umami of the sea: Characteristics, uses, and false myths Red tuna garum, known as garum sociorum, was synonymous with the best garum, the Hispanic garum, evolution of the legendary Gadiriká Taríche from Greek salting factories, later exploited by Rome. It is the most prized sauce of antiquity, and the most valuable of all the liquid preserves of the ancient Mediterranean. Its origins date back to Phoenician times. Perfected and spread by the Greeks, it reached its peak level of production, distribution, and consumption in Roman times.

Appearance:

Reddish color with medium intensity shine.

Sense of Smell:

Balsamic, metallic, with intense umami aroma, tuna and salting.

Taste:

Very intense, pleasant. Meaty, umami, marine flavor, slightly salty, with nuances of Mediterranean herbs. Salty marine and salted fish. Long and persistent aftertaste.

PAIRINGS

Due to its high umami content and savorous substances, it enhances the flavor of foods rich in vegetable proteins and of animal origin, meat or fish. It is used directly in meats and fish with strong flavor, raw or cooked, as well as in stews and emulsified with wine, oil, or vinegar, the main seasonings of Mediterranean cuisine, since depending on the ingredients with which it was mixed, it offered powerful, delicate, salty, moderate, marine, or terrestrial flavors.

Garum, or garo for the Greeks, is a sauce, a potent fermented product, with a high umami content that prevailed in the Roman culinary repertoire. Garum is an industrial product, not a domestic one, since its processing and fermentation require it to be processed in coastal salting factories, such as Carteia, Gades, Malaca, Cartago Nova, and Baelo Claudia. After its fermentation, the Roman umami sea garum is packaged in amphorae and destined for commercialization, being a highly demanded and gastronomically valued product throughout the Mediterranean.

From a gastronomic point of view, garum is a liquid preserve that had to be tamed, transformed, and incorporated into intermediate culinary preparations in most of its culinary uses, enhancing and implementing the organoleptic characteristics of the foods and ingredients with which they interacted, once these preparations with garum were added to the entire recipe. In this way, it merged with other ingredients such as wine, acetum (vinegar), oil, honey, or spices in each type of preparation that modulated its aroma, flavor, and color, offering salty, marine nuances or fruity and earthy aromatic sensations. Its presence is notable in the Apician recipe book, as its use is documented in a high percentage of recipes and also replaced salt in preparations.

With the incorporation of Garum into Roman cuisine, the balance and integration of all the elements that composed the recipe were sought, or to enhance the main ingredient in the simplest recipes

Garum could be present throughout the preparation process of the dish, which was common, or previously, acting on the main ingredient. To a lesser extent, it was added in the final part of the preparations to enhance its flavor.

In this sense, Garum diversified Roman cooking techniques to levels that are still under continuous research today.

In terms of its flavor, specifically the liquamen, it is salty, with a taste of shellfish and blue fish, shellfish with Mediterranean herb nuances. In addition to providing salinity, the spicy, botanical, and umami component, due to its high content of savory substances, amino acids, and peptides, garum enhanced the flavor of foods rich in vegetable proteins and of animal origin, meat or fish. Its use in Roman times is not restricted to fish dishes, shellfish, cephalopods, actinians, gastropods, or bivalves, among others.

Currently, both Red Tuna Garum and liquamen, both products have been scientifically reconstructed by the universities of Cadiz and Seville under the name of Garum Flower, and it is the only fermented product that faithfully reconstructs the characteristics of the ancient Roman sauce.

Even the recipe book attributed to Apicius incorporated techniques to modulate and correct the power of garum, as in combination with certain foods it offered excessive salinity if