sardina

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean, sitting between the Italian mainland, Corsica, and the North African coast. The island's name is ancient and of disputed origin — ancient sources proposed derivations from a Phoenician word, from a mythological founder named Sardus, and from various other etymologies that remain unresolved to this day. What is documented is that Greek and Roman writers used the adjective Sardinos or Sardinios to describe small fish caught in abundance in the waters around the island. The Latin sardina and sardella appear in Roman culinary texts for preserved small fish.

The ancient Mediterranean economy ran on preserved fish. Garum — a fermented fish sauce made from small oily fish — was as ubiquitous in Roman cooking as olive oil, and sardine-class fish were prime garum material. Salted and dried small fish were traded throughout the empire. The waters around Sardinia were particularly rich in pilchards (Sardina pilchardus — the species that bears the island's name in its scientific designation) and related small fish. Whether ancient sardina referred specifically to Sardina pilchardus or to a range of small preserved fish is a question that ancient texts cannot fully resolve.

The modern can of sardines descends from a French innovation. In 1810, Nicolas Appert developed the process of preserving food by heating it in sealed glass containers — canning. Within years, Breton and Loire-Atlantic processors were applying the technique to the small fish abundant along the Atlantic coast of France, and sardines in oil in tin cans became a significant export product by the 1820s and 1830s. The fish being canned in Brittany was not always the technical Sardina pilchardus — it was whatever small oily pelagic fish was locally abundant, often pilchards, sprats, herrings, or young anchovies. The word 'sardine' had expanded to cover the commercial category.

Today, the word sardine is officially ambiguous: in the United States, the FDA permits 21 different species to be sold as 'sardines.' Pilchards (Sardina pilchardus), Pacific sardines (Sardinops sagax), herrings, sprats, and brislings all appear in tins labeled sardine in different markets. The actual Sardina pilchardus is the only species with the island's name enshrined in its Linnaean binomial. The fish from Sardinia's waters may or may not be in your tin. The word is more durable than the taxonomy.