A Few Notes on Palladius’s c.420 Recipe for ‘Liquamen Ex Piris’

“LIQUAMEN EX PIRIS. Liquamen de piris castimoniale sic fiet. pira maturissima cum sale calcantur integra. ubi carnes eorum fuerint resolutae, uel in cupellis uel in uasculis fictilibus picatis condiuntur. post mensem tertium suspensae hae carnes liquorem dimittunt saporis iucundi sed coloris albiduli. contra lioc illud proderit, ut tempore, quo saliuntur, pro aliqua parte uina nigella permisceas.”

Palladius Opus Agriculturae 3.25.12, J. C. Schmitt recension of 1898

A few months ago, whilst I was researching ancient Roman “apple” varieties, I spotted a mention of liquamen in a volume entitled Opus Agriculturae, a treatise on farming and agriculture by the Roman writer Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius – commonly referred to as just Palladius – and my interest was immediately piqued.

The reason being: I first encountered the term liquamen when Max Miller, proprietor of the rather superb Tasting History YouTube channel, mentioned it in connection with garum¹Several classical and medieval writers equated liquamen and garum, assuming the name of the product had simply changed over time, although, as we’ll see, that’s not necessarily correct., an ancient Roman fermented fish sauce or condiment. Max was brave enough to make up a batch of garum in his back yard, by way of a follow-up to a quick version of garum that he made in his kitchen a few years ago. Both videos, and the more recent one in particular, are well worth a watch. They’re parts one and two of an absolutely fascinating culinary experiment, although not one I fancy attempting myself; apparently the stink of the fermenting fish after a few weeks was just as incredible as you’d imagine, if not more so.

However, the version of liquamen described by Palladius is made from fermented pears, rather than fermented fish, which immediately sounded a lot more promising. I thought I’d take a quick look at it in a bit more detail… and of course I promptly disappeared down yet another research rabbit-hole. Come with me!

Looking for Liquamen

I started with an online search for a translation of the Latin original, and the first one I came across was in Palladius on Hosbandrie (1873) by one Reverend Barton Lodge:

“And make liquamen castimoniall
Of peres thus: take peres right mature
And with hool salt, and hem [and] fleshe and all,
When thai been resolute, in stondes peres (pure)
Or erthen pottes pitches save and sure,
And after III monethes do hem suspende,
And right good liquore of hem wol descend.
His taste is goode, and whitisshe his coloure.
For that when salt and it is doon yfere,
A blakkish wyne commixt it dothe socoure.”

Barton Lodge, Palladius on Hosbandrie (1873-79)

It turned out that Palladius on Hosbandrie was Rev. Lodge’s re-translation of a fifteenth century manuscript that had translated the Palladius original into Middle English, which is why it wasn’t quite as helpfully clear as it could have been.

Thankfully I also found a much more modern translation, by Edith Evans²Evans doesn’t quote a source, and I couldn’t find an exact match anywhere else online, so I’m assuming it’s her own translation. in her article ‘A Roman Vegetarian Substitute for Fish Sauce‘ (May 20, 2021) for The Recipes Project on the Hypotheses.org website³Originally retrieved October 28, 2024 from doi.org/10.58079/tdb7., where the original passage is given as:

“Liquamen from pears: Ritually pure liquamen (liquamen castimoniale) from pears is made like this: Very ripe pears are trodden with salt that has not been crushed. When their flesh has broken down, store it either in small casks or in earthenware vessels lined with pitch. When it is hung up [to drain] after the third month without being pressed on, the flesh of the pears discharges a liquid with a delicious taste but a pastel colour. To counter this, mix in a proportion of dark-coloured wine when you salt the pears.”

This fruity liquamen seems a lot more palatable than the fermented fish version to me. It also sounds a lot lot less stinky to make. According to Palladius you just have to leave crushed, salted pears in a pitch-lined, earthenware container – I assume the pitch was to make the pottery vessel liquid-tight, rather than to add anything to the flavour – and then, after three months, hang the pear mush up to drain and collect the liquid: the finished liquamen.

Or better yet, you could follow Edith Evans’ own liquamen ex piris production method, which she assures us she has successfully used on numerous occasions, having experimented with a few different variations along the way:

“The best pears to use are juicy varieties with very tannic skins, like Williams (also known as Bartlett) and Comice. I mash up the pears – stalks, skins, cores and all – mix them with 25% – 50% of their weight in coarse sea salt (I don’t bother with the wine), and leave them at the back of the fridge in a glass jar with the lid only lightly screwed on. At the end of two months (unlike us, the Romans counted inclusively), the pulp has started to separate out. The heavier elements form a pale layer at the bottom of the jar, whilst the top part of the mixture is more liquid and is a pale pinkish-brown. When drained through a nylon sieve, the colour of the resulting liquid is a very pale version of the colour of fish sauce.”

What do you reckon? A salted perry? Something closer to a briny pear vinegar? Whatever the finished product is, or tastes like, it’s certainly intriguing.

Pears of Purity?

Something else I found intriguing was the mention in the original Palladius recipe of the term castimoniale, which is one I’m not at all familiar with. In her article, Evans suggested that:

“Liquamen castimoniale must have been required for people observing certain religious strictures (castimoniale means ‘to do with religious ceremonies’). Why would ordinary liquamen have been thought unsuitable? Was it the fish? (Pliny the Elder writes of a special fish sauce for Jews (Natural History 31.95) that he calls garum castimoniarum, although he’s obviously got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to Jewish food laws because he says it’s made using fish without scales). Alternatively, was it because liquamen was the product of fermentation? Fermentation was often considered a form of decomposition, which might have led it to be regarded as ritually unclean.”

That sounded likely enough to me, but I wanted to do a bit more digging of my own, so I hit the etymology websites. It seems the term castimoniale derives from castimonia, meaning “purity, chastity, abstinence”, which in turn comes from a combination of castus, meaning “morally pure, guiltless, spotless, chaste” etc. and the suffix ‘-mony‘, denoting “forming nouns from adjectives, nouns, or verbs”, or ‘-monium‘, “[a] suffix signifying action, state, condition”. The same combination also once gave rise to ‘castimony’. This was a medieval term derived from the Latin, and was used in a religious context to denote purity and chastity, especially of nuns, who it seems – based on the little I can glean from online searches – were sometimes said to engage in castimony as opposed to matrimony. So castimoniale can definitely be linked with religious strictures or ceremonies as Evans stated, although perhaps it was originally indicative of a more immersive form of spiritual or religious purity, of which ritual behaviour would no doubt have been a part?

Looking again at the original passage from Palladius though, it occurs to me that the title of the recipe is Liquamen ex Piris – meaning “liquamen from pears” – and the first part of the recipe, which acts as a sub-title or one-sentence summary, actually reads: “Liquamen de piris castimoniale sic fiet“. According to Google Translate, sic fiet translates to “so it will be”. Therefore, taking the suggested meaning of castimoniale into account, could the original phrase be read as: “liquamen from pears (so it will be) in a pure state”? Or perhaps something along the lines of: “[culturally / morally / ritually] pure liquamen of pears”? Although Edith Evans has, of course, neatly summed this up with her use of the more compact liquamen castimoniale.

I also queried ChatGPT – which I’ve found quite useful for translations – for another take on the etymology of castimoniale, specifically in the context of the passage from Palladius, and the LLM came back with the following:

“The term “castimoniale” in the passage derives from the Latin word “castimonia”, which is related to “castus”, meaning “pure,” “chaste,” or “clean.” In classical Latin, “castimonia” often refers to purity, chastity, or a state of ritual cleanliness.

In the context of the recipe, “castimoniale” likely carries a connotation of being “ritually pure” or “prepared in a clean and proper manner.” This suggests that the process for making the liquamen is to be carried out with care, ensuring it is untainted and suitable for consumption, possibly even with a sense of reverence or adherence to culinary tradition.

Here, it emphasizes the importance of maintaining high standards during the preparation of the sauce, ensuring both quality and perhaps an alignment with dietary or cultural expectations of purity.”

This mostly confirmed what I already knew, but whilst ChatGPT didn’t quote its sources either, this slightly different interpretation is interesting. There’s a suggestion there that it might have been the method of preparation that was intended to be ritualised – perhaps in the sense of strictly observed, or with some sort of religious blessing? – in order to ensure the spiritual purity of the product, rather than it being a method to produce a liquamen that was pure enough to be used in a ritual context.

Or, I wonder, might the two interpretations be directly linked? Could castimoniale indicate a ritualised method of liquamen preparation that in turn produced a liquamen suitable for use in actual rituals, and/or ritually observed culinary practices, as per the garum castimoniarum mentioned by Pliny in the context of Jewish observances? Was liquamen ex piris effectively one long ritual, from production through to use?

…Or Maybe Not So Pure?

I did also find an alternate view, via another take on the original recipe from a fourteenth century translation of Palladius by one Ferrer Saiol⁴Pal·ladi: Tractat d’agricultura,
Traducció catalana medieval de Ferrer Saiol (2022), ed. Raimon Sebastian, Antoni Furió and Ferran Garcia-Oliver, via avl.gva.es. – a notary at the court of Queen Eleanor of Sicily, third wife of Peter IV of Aragon – who seems to have added a bit of extra colour to his version of the preamble to the recipe:

“Liquor de peres, que·s nomena castimonial, que conforta lo cor y lo estómach y dona apetit de menjar y referma la voluntat de luxúria, se fa en tal manera:”

Which re-translates into English as something like:

“Pear liqueur, which is called castimonial, which comforts the heart and stomach and gives appetite for food and strengthens the will to lust, is made in this way:”

I’m pretty sure the middle part of that sentence wasn’t in the Palladius original, and I do wonder if Ferrer Saiol was using his imagination there, or speaking from experience?

Garum ex Piris?

Another question occurred to me as I was pondering all of the above: could a liquamen from pears also be considered to be a garum from pears, as per the long-assumed equivalence of the two terms that I mentioned earlier? According to a 2018 research paper by Sally Grainger⁵According to Grainger’s Researchgate.net publications list, she appears to be a specialist in ancient Roman fermented fish sauces, so definitely a go-to expert on the subject. of the University of Reading, the precise meanings and potential equivalence of the terms garum and liquamen are highly debatable. In the section of her paper ‘Garum and Liquamen, What’s in a Name?’ sub-titled ‘Introduction to a Confusing Terminology’, Grainger said:

“The current approach to the definition of garum and liquamen is based on the idea of a single ancient fish sauce that is derived, in the first instance, from the description of fish sauce in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (Pliny HN 31.93ff). We understand from HN and other sources that this fish sauce was called garos in Greek and this was later transliterated into garum in Latin and even later changed again into liquamen. The later term for fish sauce: liquamen is not defined satisfactorily in an early Roman context and is always considered obscure by modern scholars … it might be worth considering whether the two names always represented two distinct sauces. Quite how many forms of fish sauce existed is a controversial issue. Are we dealing with one essential substance and numerous subtypes or were there multiple recognised varieties that we cannot attribute to the surviving names? Currently we are unable to answer these questions.”⁶Grainger, Sally. (2018). Garum and Liquamen, What’s in a Name? Journal of Maritime Archaeology. 13. 10.1007/s11457-018-9211-5.

Grainger then assessed a number of additional sources and concluded that garum and liquamen are not identical after all. Her position is that Liquamen was the original Roman equivalent of the Greek fish sauce garos, and was a term that was used to indicate not only a sauce made from dissolving whole small fish or chopped chunks of larger fish in salt, but a range of similar sauces with a range of base ingredients. Palladius’ pear recipe was one such, and another version could be made from salting and fermenting meat⁷There’s a recipe for beef garum in The Noma Guide to Fermentation, if you’re interested in giving it a go.. It was widely used in the kitchen, at the cooking and preparation stage, for seasoning dishes and giving them a salty, umami savour.

Whereas Grainger contends that garum was a different product, a much more expensive sauce made from the blood and viscera of fish rather than cleaned whole fish. Garum was glossy black in appearance, rather than a clear golden colour, and was used at table as a thick, saucy condiment – a kind of ketchup, I suppose? – by the wealthy elites who wanted to impress their dinner guests with their good taste and great wealth, because they were the only members of society who could afford to buy it. And it was hardly ever used in cooking, due to its cost.

As for the recipe in hand, Grainger does very briefly mention Palladius’s pears in passing in her 2018 paper, but only in the context of its providing evidence that liquamen was the equivalent of garos, and was therefore a general term for a salt-based seasoning liquid. The focus of Grainger’s research in this paper was on the fish sauce variants, she didn’t explore the use of pears, or the castimoniale designation, in any detail.⁸Grainger did return to the subject in a subsequent paper entitled ‘Garum, Fish Blood Taboos in the Judaeo-Christian World and the Evolving Nature of Ancient Fish Sauce’ in 2024. Again, it was only a brief mention: “Palladius also gives a recipe for a liquamen de piris castimoniale, meaning a ritually pure liquamen made with pears … The term is defined as pertaining to abstinence and is associated with ecclesiastic, biblical and religious purity.” Perhaps there’s more information in her 2021 book The Story of Garum. Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World, but it’s an academic publication at an academic publication price, so I’ll have to leave that bit of extra research unexplored for now.

Conclusions?

By combining the conclusions drawn by Evans and Grainger and adding my own (and ChatGPT’s) extra little bit of etymological digging, it seems that Palladius’ liquamen castimoniale recipe was for a pear-based, liquid condiment that was intended to provide an alternative to its more common, fishy cousin, and was quite possibly prepared in a ritual manner and/or used in a ritual situation, where some sort of purity laws or dietary restrictions were applicable.

Although of course, if I’ve drawn a glaringly erroneous conclusion there, or have mis-interpreted any of the research along the way, and you know the subject matter better than me, I absolutely welcome further discussion and/or correction, which you can provide via the comments section below, or by email.

After all that, I do rather fancy giving this pear liquamen recipe a go, using Edith Evans’ method rather than Palladius’s, once I have a few over-ripe pears to experiment with. I’m lacking a pitch-lined earthenware container, but based on Evans’ recommendations, I think my 1.4l fermenting jar ought to be large enough for a small test batch. Then if the end result is worth the effort, I might upgrade to a larger fermenting crock at a later date.

How about you? Do you like the sound of Liquamen ex Piris? Have you ever tried cooking with, or even making, liquamen or garum? Do please let me know, via the comments.

Footnotes

• 1
  Several classical and medieval writers equated liquamen and garum, assuming the name of the product had simply changed over time, although, as we’ll see, that’s not necessarily correct. ↩︎
• 2
  Evans doesn’t quote a source, and I couldn’t find an exact match anywhere else online, so I’m assuming it’s her own translation. ↩︎
• 3
  Originally retrieved October 28, 2024 from doi.org/10.58079/tdb7. ↩︎
• 4
  Pal·ladi: Tractat d’agricultura,
  Traducció catalana medieval de Ferrer Saiol (2022), ed. Raimon Sebastian, Antoni Furió and Ferran Garcia-Oliver, via avl.gva.es. ↩︎
• 5
  According to Grainger’s Researchgate.net publications list, she appears to be a specialist in ancient Roman fermented fish sauces, so definitely a go-to expert on the subject. ↩︎
• 6
  Grainger, Sally. (2018). Garum and Liquamen, What’s in a Name? Journal of Maritime Archaeology. 13. 10.1007/s11457-018-9211-5. ↩︎
• 7
  There’s a recipe for beef garum in The Noma Guide to Fermentation, if you’re interested in giving it a go. ↩︎
• 8
  Grainger did return to the subject in a subsequent paper entitled ‘Garum, Fish Blood Taboos in the Judaeo-Christian World and the Evolving Nature of Ancient Fish Sauce’ in 2024. Again, it was only a brief mention: “Palladius also gives a recipe for a liquamen de piris castimoniale, meaning a ritually pure liquamen made with pears … The term is defined as pertaining to abstinence and is associated with ecclesiastic, biblical and religious purity.” Perhaps there’s more information in her 2021 book The Story of Garum. Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World, but it’s an academic publication at an academic publication price, so I’ll have to leave that bit of extra research unexplored for now. ↩︎