garum

For centuries, garum's pungent, briny charm haunted the written word of imperial cooks and self-righteous philosophers only. But all that has changed, thanks to a group of archaeologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists, who’ve uncovered the secret sauce of the Roman empire: sardines. Specifically, European sardines resembling the ones still swimming off the Iberian coast today. In a paper published in Antiquity, scientists recovered and sequenced ancient DNA from a Roman fish-salting vat at the Adro Vello site in northwestern Spain. Although the conditions of fermentation are notoriously chemical and physical hostile, including grinding, salting, acidic brine, the team was able to recover intact genetic material from broken fish bones buried in the dregs of garum production. “We show that workable