Interest in eating culture, in the UK at least, has perhaps never been so high as during the recent pandemic, with an efflorescence in home baking and cooking, and a necessary reconfiguration of the restaurant scene, alongside periodic threats to food supply. Food writing has also become rather sophisticated, in part owing to the pervasive reach of and reliance on the internet; witness, for instance, the London-based online newsletter Vittles and – to entertain historical cooking – Max Miller's Tasting History YouTube channel with its 857,000 subscribers (as of early September 2021).
The two books under review here, written prior to the disruption caused by coronavirus, offer approaches to ancient cooking and cuisine that differ vastly in granularity. The first to be discussed, G.'s Story of Garum, is a compendious display, in the scientific tradition of Harold McGee, of its author's deep learning on the subject, one would think relatively narrow, of fish sauce ancient and modern. Recent increased popular familiarity with current incarnations – ‘fish sauce occupies a special place in my heart’ writes Nik Sharma in the 4 September 2021 Guardian – and the concept of umami (see Daniel Soar in the 9 September 2021 London Review of Books), which fish sauce contributes to dishes, make this a timely project. But it is a dense and difficult read, oversaturated in detail. It is severely compromised by the largely non-existent copy-editing, with multiple syntactical and orthographical mistakes on many pages (p. 23, randomly chosen: ‘There are other views which consider a technique employed here are a single process’; ‘Varges’ should be ‘García Vargas’; a full stop is missing before ‘This issue is discussed more fully’; Geoponica is un-italicised twice; a double inverted comma is written, rather than an apostrophe, after ‘Gargilius’, in the sub-heading which has no spacing before or after it; ‘The Geoponica recipes appear on the surface to be the more complex one’; ‘of low yield and of low-quality’ is inconsistent; an extra comma intrudes in ‘linguistic, and culinary anomalies’; why is Apicius in italics and Vir inlustris Vinidarius untranslated?). This ‘story’ is not a narrative, but a multifaceted research report, and it is rather unwieldy, frequently directing readers to flick around to uncover cross-references, uncompromising in its recourse to technical vocabulary and typology, but simultaneously suffering from an odd lack of systematisation and frequent, confusing forays into polemical reviews of previous scholarship.
That said, we must acknowledge the considerable difficulties of synthesising the available evidence from multiple fields, from literary criticism to experimental archaeology (G. lists ten areas of competency in the introduction). The first half of the book is mostly concerned with the literary sources, with a pivot in Chapter 6 to archaeological materials, culminating in studies of fish bones, as proofs of the species involved, and amphorae, for their shapes, contents and labels. For this reader, Chapter 7, which presents comparative evidence, ferreted out in the vein of investigative journalism, from current Asian fish sauce production, and Chapter 8, which documents successful attempts to produce fish sauce from raw materials and analyses of the results, form the book's crux. These were deeply compelling. Similarly, the sections on salting (Chapter 9, including Cornwall and Turkey [which should, however, perhaps be Egypt] at p. 182, despite the title ‘Fishing in the Mediterranean’) and infrastructure (particularly the Pompeii garum shop), the tables, especially that of the amphorae containing fish residues (divided into finds on land or at sea), and several diagrams stand out for their comparative clarity.
The central argument of the book, against the ‘single-sauce theory’, is that there were essentially two different fish sauces: one ubiquitous, called liquamen, related to a similar Greek sauce, garos, and made from whole fish with some (not excessive) salt; the other, much darker, produced from blood viscera, called a garum haimation or sociorum. The former, liquamen, results in a residue of dissolved flesh called allec, which can float on top and may or may not contain fish bones; this liquamen was, it is claimed, primarily a culinary ingredient whereas the blood viscera garum was a finishing sauce for use at the table. Lastly, there is a separate salted fish brine called muria. These distinctions and posited usages map onto the information provided by the tenth-century ce Geoponica and correspond to the fact that the overwhelming majority of references in the recipes collected under the name Apicius are to liquamen rather than garum; explaining away the other conflicting literary sources proves broadly convincing, if not necessarily clear-cut in the specifics. I accept the primacy of the Geoponica recipe over the ostensibly earlier oenogarum in Gargilius; in contrast, I do not buy that Pliny the Elder was a mere consumer ‘whose interest in gourmet food was at best noncommittal’ (p. 26: Pliny the Younger, Ep. 3.5, the only citation, is not really evidence of this): he undoubtedly investigated kitchen practices for his universal encyclopaedia. In the description of Isidore of Seville's comments on liquamen, the observation that cuius liquor refers to salsamentum – defined (p. 34 and p. 31, neither in the index) as ‘(the process of) salting fish’ – has the effect of removing any explanation of liquamen or its etymology from the passage. Likewise, a passage about fishing and processing practices in Manilius’ Astronomica 5 is marshalled in the service of the argument, but the treatment is overworked: among other issues, tum quoque does not indicate a change of fish catch (praedae, 5.667: cf. tum quoque at 5.611) from tuna to (unmentioned) mackerel, and even if it did, illa … pars illa of 5.670 does not necessarily map onto the subsequent hinc … illa to denote the two sauces; moreover, why can 5.675, communemque cibis usum sucumque ministrat, not mean ‘provides something commonly used for food and offers a flavouring’ (cf. Lucr. 4.615–17) rather than the tortured suggestion of ‘useful juice’? As for the Horatian fish products in Satires 2 – muria in a simplex sauce (I agree that a duplex sauce was probably thickened), 2.4.65; allec, 2.4.73, allied with faex ‘dregs’, though that need not be disparaging (cf. Cic. ad Att. 1.16.11, 2.1.8); garum from the juices of a Spanish fish (like many extant references to Spain, this could be to a fish processed in the Spanish manner) in the sauce accompanying the moray eel, 2.8.46; muria not as good as water from sea urchins, 2.8.53 –, references to which in this volume are imprecise and scattered, it is surely relevant that those who are using the words, the unknown lecturer (ventriloquised by his auditor Catius) and Nasidienus (ventriloquised by Fundanius, who attended the meal), claim innovative primacy in their culinary exploits; thus, it is not necessarily the case that their statements reflect actual usage of the fish products, whether among the elite or not, or indeed Hellenistic cuisine (p. 64). Martial was not a contemporary of Galen (p. 65), and his comments on muria and allec (pp. 72–3) are in my judgement not as indicative of derogatory attitudes towards either of these as claimed.
Such readings of the literary sources (along with the frequent reliance on Loeb editors’ notes rather than the full range of scholarship, even for matters of textual criticism) do not inspire confidence in the wider interpretations. Yet the book is also a treasure trove of information for the mining. I had never heard of ‘ishiri’, the Japanese squid ink and guts finishing sauce, which is proposed as a modern analogue for blood viscera garum, nor of ‘poutine’ (not the Canadian dish of potato chips, cheese curds and gravy, but jelly-like anchovy hatchlings) used to make the southern French paste ‘pissalat’ (pictured p. 230). I marvelled at the lengths taken to obtain blood from English Channel mackerel (only the freshest can impart enough, and it pools in the head) to make a batch of garum. So, too, I appreciated the idea that the mosaic near Marbella represents a cloth filter bag for separating liquamen and allec (pp. 235–6). It was illuminating to discover that flos on amphora labels could refer to the appearance of the garum/liquamen once it was produced, that allec would not necessarily be bony, and that it may have been transported and traded to start or add to new batches of fish sauce to be sold at ports, which means that amphorae would have been consistently reused. Even the Manilius passage, the construal of which I took issue with above, was previously unfamiliar to me. G.'s industry is to be commended; if only a sourcebook-style presentation had been adopted.
The other book here reviewed, R.'s Eat, Drink, Think (a play on Eat, Pray, Love?), is not so comprehensive and has explicitly humbler aims. Comparatively slim, it sketches out an argument, accessible to laypeople, about the reach of ancient Greek conceptions of food and drink and about their relevance to the present day. This boils down to the philosophical question of where consumption should stand in an ethical system of values. The focus is squarely on ‘Great Books’: Homer's Odyssey, Euripides’ Bacchae, Plato's Symposium and Phaedo, and some Aristotelian treatises – no Xenophon or Attic Old Comedy here, nor (for instance) J. Davidson's 1998 Courtesans and Fishcakes. It is telling that a seminar was ‘a dress rehearsal for this book’ (p. 112): much of the material focused on the texts yearns to simplify, schematise and feel one's way around concepts rather than contexts, let alone philology. The first half seems especially weak in this respect. The stated goal for the Odyssey is to explain why it is the ‘eatingest epic’, in Henry Fielding's phrase, but the result is merely a ‘Greatest Hits’ tour summarising sections of the poem with quotations from R. Lattimore's translation, uninformed by recent scholarship and, surprisingly, only partially interested in the provision of xenia. I missed, to name some instances, discussion of ambrosia, moly, blood in the Book 11 necromancy, the goat's belly prize in the boxing match with Irus, the sausage simile of 20.24–30, and – most pertinently, given the comments on Polyphemus – the Cyclops’ self-sufficiency and violence as an understandable or even quasi-realistic mistrust of thieves. I am also unclear why, still in Odyssey 9, ‘Nohbody’ is spelt thus (the explanation about how outis ‘sounds like “Odysseus”’ does not clarify). I allow that the observations about the act of eating as an acknowledgement of the march of time, and the pun in Eidothea's name making her a representation of unchanging Form, are apposite, but these pickings seem scant reward. As for the Bacchae, the expected E.R. Dodds and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche rub up against William James and, less anticipated and more controversial, Lawrence Osborne's 2013 The Wet and the Dry: a Drinker's Journey through societies that frown on alcohol (ab)use; an apologia, advertising non-endorsement, has to be made for Osborne's views of Islam (p. 59). On matters such as privileged female access to Bacchic ritual and views of Bacchanalian rites as seditious, let alone such a figure in Bacchic reception as Nonnus (whose Dionysiaca 44–6 re-tread the events of Euripides’ play and who also authored the Christian Paraphrase of John), there is silence. To say in conclusion that ‘the good supper, the crowded table, is a tragic affair’ (p. 74: not about Thyestes!) is banal and unsatisfying.
However, the book picks up considerably when we turn to Plato, reflecting R.'s philosophy professor background. The musings on the nature of the soul, and true ways to feed it, especially cued by Alcibiades’ appearance at the end of the Symposium, are well-judged enough to allow us to disregard the continued resemblance of the argument to an overview or a primer floating free of historical concerns. I found the foray into Augustine, Calvin (via Weber), and – somewhat incongruously – the nutritious food-replacement beverage Soylent enjoyable, if rather nugatory. The chapter on Aristotle is the best in the book, aided as it is by diagrams on the triadic structure of nutrition, perception and intellect (pp. 144–5). The complications of the apparent allying of the psyche to the physical body are nicely elucidated, and the inevitable aporia does not come as a disappointment. I do wish, nevertheless, that an attempt had been made to reckon with the precepts of other philosophical schools: Stoicism, Cynicism and especially Epicureanism would have added ballast to the book and fit with the general theme; consideration of the last in particular would have helped combat the popular perception of its ancient incarnation as unmitigated hedonism.
Still, it is necessary to remark upon a striking feature of this book. Each chapter is separated by ‘Interludes’ (and there are a ‘Prelude’ and a ‘Postlude’ too), which appear to track R.'s meals that accompanied the composition of this book. The idea seems to be to model a discerning, philosophical approach to modern-day food consumption, which devolves in the later instalments into despondent ponderings concerning R.'s perceived shelf life, children's life course and university department's apparent shortcomings (pp. 159–60 for this last). But this food diary comes across as highly bourgeois and hyper-local, referring as it does so easily and often to farmer's markets and restaurants in the greater Boston area, which leaves it open to the charge of metropolitan elitism. There is no appreciation anywhere of the baked-in politicisation of food; environmental concerns and farming policy impinge only as they affect the availability of so-called ‘industrial’ produce; most mystifyingly for a book allegedly about Greek food, a great majority of the meals (and the holiday trips) referred to are Italian. Thus, this book does not form more than a superficial argument for inclusivity or relevance in Classics, a field undergoing considerable soul-searching over status and impact. That statement, indeed, applies also to The Story of Garum. Why should we care about ancient food? Whether or not it involves chefs and connoisseurs searching for novelty, to appropriate for themselves an ‘edge’ related, in the case of garum, to such local traditions as the ‘colatura di alici’, about which Rachel Roddy posted on Instagram on 28 August 2021 (traditionally Campanian, though the one she used was made sustainably in Reggio Calabria), there is a desire to say: look at the ancients! How much like us they are! The problem persists: who are we?
