> We would find many Roman dishes unpalatable; let alone those of the
> Praxians or the Western Lunars. The Romans used garum as a base for
> almost everything they cooked...
Loads of folk will have heard the old theory that lead poisoning from urban plumbing was responsible for the degeneration of the Roman Empire. (Their brains started to seize up, and the barbarians walked over them).
Recently (in Rome), I heard a spin-off from this: as one of the symptoms of lead poisoning is loss of the sense of taste, perhaps the generally repulsive garum-laced recipies in Apicius et al. can be attributed to the desperate attempts of a sensation-starved populace to find something -- anything! -- which still retained some of its flavour for them.
I dunno...
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