> One such food historian, Sally Grainger, notes in her 2021 book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World that despite discussions of Roman fish sauce in many publications, Roman fish sauce is not actually Roman at all: it’s Greek.
this seems to be a trope. Mark Kurlansky (who is cited later in this fantastic article!) wrote an excellent book called “Cheesecake” whose central plot line concerns a bakery trying to make Cato’s cheesecake, a cheesecake often recognized as the “first” cheesecake for whom a recipe was published. Except the bakery/restaurant is Greek, and the owners, who are also Greeks, are convinced that the Romans stole this recipe from them.
As for the liquid gold itself: fish sauce is unbelievable. Elevates dishes as much as its smell nauseates. I was shocked to learn that fish sauce is legitimate just fish and salt!
The argument in favor of Cato's cheesecake being of Greek origin is that it had a Greek name.
Cato's cheesecake is named in Latin "placenta", which comes from a Greek word whose approximate meaning is "flat cake".
It was called "flat" because it was made from stacked flat sheets of baked dough, between which a filling was put. In the recipe of Cato, the main ingredients mixed in the filling were cheese and honey.
The name "placenta", with various phonetic alterations, continues to be used until today in some European languages, for this kind of cake.
Nevertheless, a Greek name does not necessarily mean that this kind of cake came from Ancient Greece. Before the Romans conquered all Italy, there were many Greeks in Southern Italy and especially in Sicily. After the Romans also conquered the Greek peninsula, there were a lot of Greeks in Rome, including many slave Greek cooks.
So the name of the cake could have its origin in some Greek cook from Italy or Rome.