スローフード協会と調味料

One of the major international projects of Slow Food, this article discusses the "Ark of Taste", activities to protect traditional food from extinction, focusing on the condiment category. Even though condiments are already listed in the manifesto as a possible "passenger" of the Ark, this has not aroused much interest for a number of years. Recently, thanks to the development of international activities focused on biodiversity, including the international "Ark of Taste", grassroots "Praesidia", the Terra Madre, and "10,000 Gardens in Africa"; a lot of precious condiments have arrived from Italy and enriched the network of quality food and food producers. From the recognized Italian condiments, this article illustrates particularly a traditional Italian condiment called "Colatura", a fish sauce of Cetara from the Amalfi coast near Naples, from various points of view in gastronomic sciences. After the recognition of Slow Food, colatura is in the trial phase of DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) for further steps of preservation and commercialization. This article also covers some of the contents from official DOP documents. If Colatura becomes DOP, it will be the first example of a fishbased product as DOP. The working team is trying to standardize the system of sensorial analysis to identify the authenticity of the product.