Development of a sardine preserve using roman sauce garum

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Joana Rita Correia
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/38132
• topic: Preserves; Sardine; Garum; Food; Inovation

Canned fish is a food that the Portuguese population usually consumes. As this work was carried out in a fish canning factory, the objective of developing a new canned fish arose. Given the existing restrictions on the use of certain types of fish due to certificates held by the factory (Halal and Kosher), the innovation was restricted to the sauce. The sauce chosen was garum, a sauce produced by the Romans until the V century that resulted from the enzymatic digestion of fish deposited in cetarias (stone tanks), together with salt. Only autolysis occurred, in which there is a breakdown of molecules by the intestinal microflora of the sardine (a fish chosen by the strong tradition of consumption in Portugal). In autolysis, tissue softening occurs due to the action of collagenases, calpain and carboxypeptidases, which leads to increased tissue permeability and consequent migration of the intestinal microflora from its place of origin to the surrounding sites. This migration leads to the enzymatic digestion of the various existing sardine tissues, and the consequent formation of a liquid fraction, which fraction is used as a sauce for the developed preserves. The parts of the sardine used have an influence on the final constitution of the sauce, and 2 sauces were made: one with viscera and heads, and another with the whole sardine. The inclusion of sauces in preserves was made after dilution in olive oil due to the high salinity of the sauce, and dilution tests were carried out in order to verify the most viable dilution value. Both sauces were analysed for essential minerals, and the sauce with the whole sardine was richer in calcium (371 mg/kg vs. 184 mg/kg), in iron (4.12 mg/kg vs. 2.32 mg /kg) and zinc (2.40 mg/kg vs. 1.18 mg/kg). However, as the organoleptically most pleasant was the viscera and sardine heads, this was selected for the final preserve, since what matters most to the factory is profitability. In addition to being more pleasant to taste, the guts and heads garum can only be made using production surpluses, which makes the raw material used by the factory profitable.