Garos sauce

Garos is a fine ancient fish sauce. Not using salt to flavor the food made garos sauce very popular in ancient Greece. Its production was industrial, and Corinth and Delos were its centers.

This fine sauce has a negative trait: it stains clothes and it does not wash out of them, and this is why there is a saying, that the clothes “gariasan”, that is, they got old.

The course of garos sauce in ancient Greece did not stop in ancient Rome, it continued and reached Byzantium, and didn’t stop even after the fall of Byzantium. Its widespread use seems to have stopped in the 16^th century, when tomato was introduced in Europe.

Garos sauce is a preparation based on fish entrails or whole small fish (for example atherina), and large ones as well (for example mackerel).

Place the fish entrails or the fish into a cooking vessel with plenty of salt, cover and leave in the sun for 2 or 3 months, stirring them often.

The viscous liquid that will remain after the draining is what we call garos sauce.

The best garos sauce is made from mackerel liver and it is exclusively preserved in fine olive oil.

The garos sauce that we used today in our menu has been made from fish entrails that have undergone a fermentation process in a salt water solution (brine) and heat treatment (boiling).