(A history lesson, including the first ever “Here, smell this.”)
Let me ask you something. At dinner parties, have you ever been offered any food that can also, for medicinal purposes, be shoved in a mule’s nose? I mean, lately?
It amazes me how we humans, throughout history, have managed to come up with some of the things we eat. How did we discover that some admittedly unlikely, often bizarre items were edible? And at what cost? How many sacrificial Europeans did we burn through while they figured out which mushrooms could be safely eaten, which mushrooms were fatal widow-makers, which mushrooms could be sold to American tourists at outrageous prices, and which mushrooms, in 1968, would cause Joe Cocker’s lyrics to make sense?
Here’s another example to ponder. Long ago, somewhere, some carefree (but extremely hungry) proto-human was proto-prancing around in the surf. Suddenly, he gashed himself on a cluster of rough black rocks, and immediately had two thoughts:
1) Hey, I wonder if there’s anything inside that rock that I can eat? 2) Ow!
It gets better. Later that proto-afternoon, this same bruised but determined human (his name, by the way, was Oog) took a hammer to one of the black rocks, as soon as somebody invented the hammer. Inside the rock was some runny, oily thing that looked like an early outtake from “Alien.” Still famished but a bit hesitant, Oog stared at the shimmering blob for a while, wondering what to call it, until his wife, Oyster, invented cocktail sauce.
And mollusks are but one example of stuff that was just lying around, stuff that we somehow decided we ought to eat. Another example is corn (or as the indigenous Americans called it, “ethanol”). Obviously, somebody once saw those tall stalks, saw those thick, fibery bulges, looked closer and thought, “Man, that is one seriously nasty worm. Wonder what’s under it? Can we eat it? Did anybody invent butter yet?”
Other things aren’t food, automatically. They have to become foods; in other words, they require preparation, sometimes for days and days. Pickles. Have you ever seen a recipe for homemade pickles? You have to really, really want to make pickles – especially if you’re a disciple of the “barrel ferment” school of pickle-making, which requires an investment of 3-6 weeks, which means the recipe lasted longer than Kim Kardashian’s marriage.
To be sure, there are people who really, really want to make pickles. One company wanted to make pickles so badly that it eschewed any concept of a marketing tie-in and just signed the first mascot that showed up for auditions: an animated stork with a Groucho Mark accent (see “mushrooms, circa 1968″).
And you can’t just run out and grow pickles. You have to grow cucumbers. That means somebody once saw a cucumber and thought, “You know, if I took charge of that thing for about a month, it would ROCK a cheeseburger. Did anybody invent cheese yet?”
Of course, you can’t have a cheeseburger with a bun (it’s in the US Constitution). How did mankind ever figure out how to make bread? Who walked through a wheat field and thought, “I’m gonna invent the sandwich! Or maybe artisan beer. Hey, who’s that sad, armored guy in my wheat field? Is that Russell Crowe?”
(By the way – when somebody did finally invent sliced bread, how did anybody compliment them? “Great idea, Atlanta Panera! Sliced bread…why, that’s the greatest thing since sli…um…uh…that’s, um…”)
Making dough can be complicated, unless you’re the US Treasury. Some bread recipes call for sunlight, some require darkness. Some breads need to rise, some don’t. (Some pushy, big-headed breads want to rise more than once, as if they thought they were Cher’s career.) Some breads want yeast, some breads don’t. (Yeast is a biological agent known as an “activator,” a group which includes baker’s yeast, natural leaven, and Al Sharpton.)
But for pure “pardon me?” value, you can’t beat garum.
Single guys: Here’s a handy “social graces” quiz. You’re at dinner with your neighbors who, thanks to lax mortgage regulations, are second century Romans. Your host, Sirius Girth, proudly uncorks a clay jar and extends it to you, inviting you to admire its aroma. You take a quick whiff of something so foul it makes your grandparents sterile.
Select your optimal response:
a) “Mmm. Let me guess. Week-old isotope-blasted pork. North slope?” b) “Ah! Mule medicine!” c) “Is that smell normal, or did your aqueduct back up?”
What is this rancid liquid with the scalp-blistering smell? Meet garum.
In ancient Rome, garum was a type of fermented fish sauce. It was both a delicacy and a staple, an essential flavor in ancient Roman cooking, and one of the main reasons the ancient Romans kept running off to places like Gaul, and England, and Brooklyn.
But what is garum? Well, according to the internet, garum is similar to liquamen. Oh, gee, thanks. I don’t know about you, but “similar to liquamen” tells me absolutely nothing. Liquamen sounds like a catchy brand name for some product made especially for single guys who can’t follow those complicated instructions on tap water.
Although garum was wildly popular in the ancient Roman world, it originally came from Greece, along with other world-molding things, like the Olympics, and suffocating debt. “Garon” was the Greek name for the fish whose intestines were originally used to make garum.
That’s right. Fish guts. Garum is fish guts. We took our “western civilization” cues from a clutch of ancient whack jobs who ate fish guts.
Oh, it gets better.
Not just any old fish guts. Fish guts, softened by soaking in salt, and then left out in direct sunlight for two or three months.
Somebody thought that up. Holius mackeralus. Somebody thought to do that to a fish, and then eat it. Who, for Peteus sakeus? Maybe one of those 27,000 fun-loving hearth gods. Maybe Oedipus’ mom, which would explain some other things, too.
Apparently, garum was a real treat in ancient Rome, a cultural high point, which should serve as a warning to any country that’s considering letting everybody run around dressed like pledges at an “Animal House” frat party. And it was economical, too – garum would keep for years, due to its high salt content, and due to the fact that nobody was exactly eager to eat something that smelled like Sunday morning behind Ulysses S. Grant’s molars.
Sun-baked, three-month-old, fermented fish guts, as food. Kinda makes “Hot Pockets” look like an evening with Wolfgang Puck.
It gets better.
According to Pliny (literal translation: “of or having pline”), the ubiquitous (literal translation: “vile molar breath”) garum also had medicinal values, for humans and animals. For example, it was used to treat bone spavin in horses and mules, and was said to cure scabies in sheep.
(NOTE FROM OUR STAFF: For the half-dozen or so of you out there who aren’t 2,000-year-old ancient Roman veterinarians: Bone spavin is not a disease – it’s actually a theatrical device, wherein ancient Roman vets would artificially pad their bills by following these simple steps: remove the scholarly glasses, pinch the bridge of the nose, sigh defeatedly, and then interject vague terms like ‘hock joint,’ ‘tarsometatarsal articulation’ and ‘Royal Lipizzaner submission fee.’)
(NOTE FROM OUR STAFF: Scabies, by the way, is a contagious skin disease marked by excessive scratching, and you haven’t really lived a rich, full life till you’ve seen a sheep trying to scratch its own back.)
(NOTE FROM OUR STAFF: We should note that ‘Bone Spavin’ would be a great name for a band.)
Garum was considered a good antidote for dog bites, and crocodile bites, too, as long as your HMO plan covered giant lizard wounds and brutally skank-smelling generics.
Other ancient Roman healers, especially those with excellent malpractice insurance, used garum as a treatment for everything from ulcers to dysentery, from sciatica to sea dragon bites (for more on sea dragons, see “mushrooms, circa 1968″). Garum was often prescribed as a laxative and, given what garum is made of, that’s probably redundant.
Garum was also used to treat animals. And here, our story leaps past “strange” and rushes straight to “downright odd.” As the late Hunter S. Thompson might say, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Imagine you’re an ancient Roman horse with phlegm issues. (That exact phrase, by the way, was part of the proposal that led directly to the Kim Kardashian wedding. Or divorce.) Then suddenly one morning, your owner, Bifidus Regularis, reads an article about horse and mule phlegm (it was a slow news day) on the front stone of The Daily Stele (“All the news that’s fit to chisel”), a piece penned by those two famous veterinarians, Vegetius (literal translation: “meat & three”) and Pelagonius (literal translation: “Sid Caesar”). And then, heeding the advice of experts, your owner decides to treat your problem by pouring a gallon of garum in your nose.
How humiliating! And what can you do? Who do you get in touch with? It’s not like you can retire to a stud farm, because nobody’s invented Kentucky yet.
And it’s not an option for the likes of you, an aging equus, to make a scene – to just snort, cavil and complain.
After all, down the via a piece, somebody just invented glue.