Tímarit Verkfræðingafélags Íslands - 01.12.1967, Page 288

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TlMARIT VPl 1967
one important feature in common insofar as
they reflect the desire to preserve fish in a form
closely resembling that of the original raw
material.
The utilization of other, more stable, foods
was not similarly restricted. Com, for instance,
is processed into cereal, and dried eggs and milk
have fotrnd universal utility because, by losing
their identity, they could find their way into a
large variety of foods. One of the oldest of man’s
staples, wheat, is known by the name triticum,
a name related to the Latin expression for the
pulverizing process which alters the product’s
original form and appearance. Many similar
examples could be given; in the case of fish,
however, the desire has, with a very few excep-
tions, almost always been to consume it in the
form of fish. .
When man lived on the ocean’s coastlines and
migrated up rivers, he was primarily a fish gat-
herer. But when man moved inland, fish did
not remain a major source of food because of
the difficulties of fish preservation, storage, and
distribution. In the face of today’s exploding
populations and increasing protein shortages,
new concepts of fish utilization must be deve-
loped and better use must be made of a hitherto
insufficiently utilized food supply. Fish must be
conceived as an additive to other foods; the age-
old concepts of consuming fish exclusively in the
form of fish must be discarded. The idea must
be estabhshed and accepted of using fish as a
concentrate, primarily of protein, suitable for
incorporation into foods of lesser nutritive value.
Although never fully accepted and successful,
many attempts have been made since early times
to produce concentrates from fish for human
consumption, concentrates in which the identity
of the raw material has been lost.
Witness to this fact can be found at least as
far back as the days of classical Rome: A vase
was found in the ruins of Pompeii, Italy, bearing
the inscription: “Liquamen optimum siccatum ex
officino umbrici agathopi.“ This, freely trans-
lated, means: “The best liquamen (FPC) in the
world is made in the factories of Umbricus Agat-
hopus.”
We are fortunate that a cookery book has been
handed down to us from the first century A.D.
The author of this book, Apicius1), describes in
*) Flower, B., and E. Rosenbaum, Apicius. 1958. The
Roman Cookery Book. Peter Nevill, Ltd., London and
New York.
detail not only the recipes of the upper- and
middle-class families of Rome, but also indicate
the method of manufaeture of one of the most
important of all food supplements that the
Romans knew: liquamen, a liquid protein hydro-
lysate made from fish, ubiquitously consumed by
the Romans and their satellites.
This fishing industry, of course, has always
been of great importance in Europe, huge
amounts of fish coming from Newfoundland even
before Columbus came to the New World. It is
strange, therefore, that the art of making liqua-
men was almost completely lost in post-Roman
times.
However important the fishing industry was
m Europe, it probably never had quite the same
significance as in Asia. Two facts illustrate this
point: the first is that the oldest known form of
money in circulation in India and Ceylon was
the fish hook; the second, that the manufacture
from fish of FPC in the form of fish sauces and
pastes, similar to liquamen, developed very early
all over the Far East.
As far as the preservation of fish is con-
cerned, the Asian people seem to have been in
advance of the Europeans; although the fish
industry in Europe was one of the few com-
mercial undertakings organized on a huge inter-
national scale, no real advances in the preserva-
tion of fish beyond sun-drying, salting, and smok-
ing were made for almost 2,000 years, when
Appert started the canning industry in France.
As for the New World, we have to wait until
the late 1800s to notice any really startling deve-
lopment in the field of fish preservation: in a
publication by the U. S. Commission of Fish and
Fisheries we note that the Honorable S. L. Good-
ale of Saco, Maine, invented a process by which
the juices of the flesh of fish could be extracted
to form an article of food which promised to be of
much commercial value. In the article the writer
addresses himself to his readers and says: “No
one needs less than yourself to be told how
great are the possibilities for this new project.
From each barrel of menhaden you can get three
pounds of extract when the flesh alone is used
and four pounds if the spine is retained in dress-
ing.” He goes on: “I cannot avoid the conclusion
that a new source of food is within reach which,
at no distant day, may contribute materially to
human welfare.” A httle further in the same
article biscuits are described which were made
with “fish flour,” and it was called such. These
biscuits were exhibited by the Norwegian Depart-