Amurca

Amurca is the Latin name for the bitter-tasting, dark-colored, watery sediment that settles out of unfiltered olive oil over time. It has been known in English as "olive oil lees"[1] and recently as "olive mill waste water (OMWW)".[2] Historically, amurca was used for numerous purposes, as first described by Cato the Elder in De Agri Cultura, and later by Pliny the Elder.[3] Cato mentions its uses as a building material (128), pesticide (91, 92, 96, 98), herbicide (91, 129), dietary supplement for oxen (103) and trees (36, 93), food preservative (99, 101), as a maintenance product for leather (97), bronze vessel (98), and vases (100), and as a treatment for firewood in order to avoid smoke (130).[4]

Amurca pit at one oil mill, in the province of Jaén.

References

1. Sana Janakat et al., "Antimicrobial activity of amurca (olive oil lees) extract against selected foodborne pathogens" in Food Science and Technology [Campinas] vol. 35 (2015) pp. 259-265
2. Jose Antonio Morillo-Pérez et al., "Bioremediation and biovalorisation of olive-mill wastes" in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology vol. 82 (2009) pp. 25-39; Giulia Crouch, "‘Nonna Caterina was right’: olive oil wastewater heralded as new superfood" in The Guardian (24 August 2024)
3. Pliny, John Bostock; Henry Thomas Riley (1856). The Natural History of Pliny: Amurca of Olives – Twenty-one Remedies. p. 486.
4. "LacusCurtius • Cato on Agriculture — Sections 126‑134".

External links

• Cato the Elder on Agriculture
• Olives in Antiquity (Smith's Dictionary, 1875)
• Forerunners of Pesticides in Classical Greece and Rome

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). "Amurca". Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.