Mmmm

A Roman recipe from An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher from a collection of her works entitled The Art of Eating:

GARUM (400 B.C.)

Place in a vessel all the insides of fish, both large fish and small. Salt them well. Expose them to the air until they are completely rotted. Drain off the liquid that comes from them, and it is the sauce garum.

Kennedy Fisher, Mary Frances . The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition (p. 901). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Or perhaps it is the cesspool of death that it appears to be…