A Brief History of Fish Sauce
legalnomads.com

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188 points

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vinhnx

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a day ago

83 comments

throwaway20148 ・ 10 hours ago

In the early 2000s, post-dotcom-crash I worked at small consultancy for the airlines industry that had a software wing. I think I made $11/hour slinging PHP code. They had sequestered the engineers, (half a dozen of us, all young) in the back of a large print shop (the consultancy specialized in manuals) and we had our own kitchen back there, so we sometimes cooked together.

One of my coworkers was married to a Laotian woman and as such married into a large Laotian community. One day we went to the Asian supermarket and we bought all the stuff to make green papaya salad and larb. He brought three specific things from home for this: a weird aluminum cauldron, a bamboo basket to put on it (to make sticky rice) and a repurposed instant coffee bottle full of the strangest looking sludge. It looked kind of like peering into a chewing tobacco spit bottle. This was a bottle of homemade padaek[1] and he said it was like liquid gold in the community he lived in. It was foul as hell to smell but we did a taste test of the papaya salad before and after mixing it in and sure enough it was so much better with the padaek. It was an eye opening experience and since then I've always had a fish sauce bottle in my fridge. I even use a little of it in things like spaghetti sauce.

Anyway if you have a chance to get your hands on a little homemade padaek, definitely do it. Would kill for some, myself. Also, share new foods with friends if they are open to it. I am very fond of that memory. I had never been exposed to those dishes before and even that small experience broadened my world in a simple, but meaningful way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padaek

  • tnelsond4 ・ 13 minutes ago

    Yeah, my wife is Cambodian and she buys the Lao stuff because she knows people who make it without chemicals.

    The Cambodian version is Prahok and apparently it's usually raw and you aren't supposed to eat it raw, but I ate it raw (it was pink colored) for a couple days before someone told me. Prahok sounds gross but the stinky flavor is really reminiscent of cheese.

  • jbgt ・ an hour ago

    I had a nice Thai Omelet once in a restaurant and then looked up the recipe. Now I always add a bit of fiah sauce into my eggs, with chopped garlic and some soy sauce and a bit of water so it gets fluffy in the hot oil. Never thought fish in omelet would work but it's quite tasty!

  • fnoff ・ 3 hours ago

    If people put anchovy in their bolognese, I can imagine fish sauce is a great and easy substitute. Never thought of that, but will try next time it's on the menu :)

  • mikepurvis ・ 6 hours ago

    I put a little fish sauce in chili too; it's great for giving savoury things that nice umami kick.

  • semi-extrinsic ・ 5 hours ago

    This stuff is great for anything savory. Just don't tell your kids what it is.

    And don't let them smell the raw shrimp paste.

  • kbutler ・ 10 hours ago

    Sounds like what they call "bla ra" in Thailand (Northeastern Thailand has a lot of Laotian influence). Thick/chunky, unlike the more refined "fish sauce" - "nam bla".

    Lived in a house for a while with neighbors making it - slow fermenting pots of fish. Not a pleasant olfactory experience.

wluu ・ 8 hours ago

If anyone needs a Vege friendly fish sauce, here's one for Lao/Thai food https://www.veganlaofood.com/recipe/fish-sauce/

It's pretty simple to make.

  • lobofta ・ 4 hours ago

    Thanks. It is too bad so few people think of fish as the sentient beings that they are.

    • kulahan ・ 2 hours ago

      I don't think many people are confused on the sentience of fish... nor that telling people this would get them to stop eating fish anyways. It's a pretty important source of protein for much of the world.

comrade1234 ・ 3 hours ago

Colatura di Alici is fish sauce made from anchovies in the same Roman town since the Roman republic. It was used by everyone on everything and also traveled with soldiers across Europe during the empire. It's nice - it tastes "softer" than the Asian fish sauces.

I also buy from Italians at a farmers market here in Switzerland rotten anchovies packed in salt and ground peppercorns. Stinks but when you add one to pasta sauce you're making the smell disappears and tons of glutamates are added.

  • fransje26 ・ an hour ago

    > I also buy from Italians at a farmers market here in Switzerland rotten anchovies packed in salt and ground peppercorns.

    Does this condiment have a specific name?

nunez ・ 4 hours ago

> One such food historian, Sally Grainger, notes in her 2021 book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World that despite discussions of Roman fish sauce in many publications, Roman fish sauce is not actually Roman at all: it’s Greek.

this seems to be a trope. Mark Kurlansky (who is cited later in this fantastic article!) wrote an excellent book called “Cheesecake” whose central plot line concerns a bakery trying to make Cato’s cheesecake, an ancient Roman cheesecake recipe that is often recognized as the “first” cheesecake for whom a recipe was published. Except the bakery/restaurant is Greek, and the owners, who are also Greeks, are convinced that the Romans stole this recipe from them.

As for the liquid gold itself: fish sauce is unbelievable. Elevates dishes as much as its smell nauseates. I was shocked to learn that fish sauce is legitimate just fish and salt!

dherman ・ 10 hours ago

My high school Latin classmates and I made garum and left it to ferment in my back yard for a month. Young and foolish as we were, we stored it in a plastic Tupperware container. The day I brought it back to school for the class tasting, I had it sitting on a stack of piano books in the passenger seat of my car.

Weeks later, the rotted fish stench just wouldn't fade from my book of Beethoven sonatas. I ended up throwing it away.

kccqzy ・ 11 hours ago

I bought a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce (Red Boat brand, the most recommended brand) and added a teaspoon to some pea leaves. I loved the resulting flavor, but my partner did not and complained that it had too much of a fishy smell. A lot of cooking techniques actually seek to remove this fishy smell even when cooking fish, so it was not welcome to add this to something that didn’t contain fish in the first place. It’s certainly not a flavor everyone would like.

  • littleroot ・ 44 minutes ago

    Vietnamese here, no we add this to almost everything, especially things that don't contain fish in the first place. We have techniques to remove the fish smell where we don't desire it, but to be honest highest grade nước mắm would smell more like pure umami than fish so removing the remaining fish smell isn't that hard, usually just some peppers would be enough.

  • whywhywhywhy ・ 17 minutes ago

    Never thought it tasted fishy really anyway it's more acrid umami.

  • wahern ・ 9 hours ago

    I use anchovy fillets in alot of recipes to add umami and nutrients, not just sauces but also things like meatloaf. Fishiness dissipates pretty quickly with heat, even faster with acidic ingredients like tomatoes, citrus, or vinegar. It's pretty easy to modulate fishiness, even with just acid. I double or triple the anchovies in a typical caesar dressing recipe, and if I feel I over did it just adding more lemon juice tamps it down.

    One of my kids is pretty picky, even sensitive to onions, but doesn't seem to pick up on the anchovies. She'll eat fish, though, depending on mood, so maybe she's not the best benchmark.

    • jandrewrogers ・ 5 hours ago

      I use massive amounts of anchovies in my cooking and various types of processed fish generally. They do not trigger the extremely strong “rancid fish” effect of e.g. Vietnamese fish sauce that some people can taste even in small quantities.

      The anchovies disappear into the food. For people like me, the fish sauce never does, you just get a mouthful of rancid fish taste. People gave up trying to hide it from me years ago because nothing really seems to work.

    • MengerSponge ・ 7 hours ago

      That's the spirit! But you shouldn't underestimate the power of suggestion:

      "This was cooked with fish sauce" -> "This tastes fishy"

  • Daub ・ 2 hours ago

    I live in Vietnam, and it is jokingly said that the smell of fish sauce is used by some Vietnamese to get rid of unwanted foreigners, to be used when the smell of durian doesn’t work.

  • antinomicus ・ 10 hours ago

    Fish sauce is not supposed to be added to the point that you can taste the fishy taste, you do get that right? If you’ve added enough to impart fishy taste, you’ve added way too much.

    • NL807 ・ 10 hours ago

      Not quite true. Lots of Thai dishes use a tonne of fish sauce and even shrimp paste in their dishes. They even make side dish dipping sauce (Nam Jim Jaew) that's like basically 50% fish sauce.

    • jandrewrogers ・ 10 hours ago

      No, people have different sensitivity to it. Many people experience Vietnamese fish sauce as a strong “rancid fish” character that is not at all subtle in all traditional recipes that use it. It isn’t “using too much”, it is “using any at all”.

      I imagine it is like the people who are sensitive to cilantro, thinking it tastes like soap.

    • skrtskrt ・ 7 hours ago

      I think in many dishes you can add quite a lot, but it blends and cooks in with other ingredients so that the "fish sauce flavor" does not jump out as such.

      I make mapo tofu with 1 tsp each of fish sauce, oyster sauce and light soy sauce. I don't think anyone would think it tastes like fish or oyster sauce in any way, but it doesn't taste right at all without them. The same goes for many other dishes.

      • terribleperson ・ 5 hours ago

        I need to try this. Typically I make my mapo tofu with dry-fried mushrooms and mushroom stock (I've found this much tastier than a pork or beef-based mapo tofu), but I don't always have the mushroom preparation on hand and punching up a pork mapo tofu with fish sauce would be much more convenient.

        What kind of fish sauce do you use?

    • wildzzz ・ 9 hours ago

      I've used fish sauce as an alternative to anchovy paste for caeser salad dressing which is heavily defined by a fishy taste.

    • kccqzy ・ 10 hours ago

      I could not taste the fishy taste myself but my partner can. It varies by person how sensitive they are.

    • xuki ・ 10 hours ago

      Some people are just more sensitive to certain smells and flavors than others, especially if they didn't have previous exposure to them.

    • raincole ・ 9 hours ago

      I don't think your idea of 'fishy taste' is the same as theirs.

    • morkalork ・ 10 hours ago

      Right? It's there to add a layer of depth and savoury umami

      • 121789 ・ 6 hours ago

        Lots of people are super sensitive to the “fishiness” of fish sauce. I can taste it with just a few drops in a large dish. I love it now, but it took a while to get used to

tananan ・ a day ago

Thanks for sharing. It is especially interesting to hear the factors that contributed to the decline of fish sauce use in the west.

One thing I am “stealing” from SEA is fish sauce in scrambled eggs. Feels almost like a cheat code.

  • vinhnx ・ 21 hours ago

    Oh absolutely and you're welcome! Btw, fish sauce in scrambled eggs over rice is one of the simplest, most satisfying meals you'll find across Southeast Asia, in my country Vietnam especially. It's my favorite meal also.

  • AdieuToLogic ・ 11 hours ago

    > One thing I am “stealing” from SEA is fish sauce in scrambled eggs. Feels almost like a cheat code.

    A bit of stone ground mustard added to scrambled eggs is another culinary delight.

    • markdown ・ 10 hours ago

      What if my mustard is made without stones. Will it still work?

      • AdieuToLogic ・ 9 hours ago

        > What if my mustard is made without stones. Will it still work?

        It depends on your risk tolerance to try I suppose. It will either be a delicious variant or create a space-time singularity dooming us all...

        :-D

  • dbcooper ・ 9 hours ago

    Worcestershire Sauce (fermented anchovy base) with eggs is a classic combination for a reason.

  • kulahan ・ 2 hours ago

    lime juice with the fish sauce works surprisingly well (in scrambled eggs, I mean)

  • ghaff ・ 10 hours ago

    At least in the US, fish in general is somewhat polarizing and, probably especially, strong tasting fish like anchovies, fish sauce, etc. Just not something probably the majority of people grew up with.

    • jandrewrogers ・ 10 hours ago

      It isn’t just familiarity. Some people experience some fish sauces as having vividly foul flavor. This includes people who routinely eat anchovies, cured fish, etc.

      It is clearly an issue of sensitivity.

    • rayiner ・ 10 hours ago

      Its midwesterners. There’s a fish tradition in most other parts of the country.

      • 121789 ・ 6 hours ago

        Nah fish sauce is different. You can give most midwesterners fish and chips or worcestershire and they’ll be fine with it. But many will find fish sauce initially pungent and repulsive until they get used to it

    • duped ・ 10 hours ago

      Worcestershire sauce is a fish sauce that's used all over American cuisine, especially BBQ.

      • jandrewrogers ・ 10 hours ago
        ・ 4 more

        Yep. But unlike, say Red Boat, I don’t know anyone who thinks it has a strong rancid taste.

        • ghaff ・ 10 hours ago
          ・ 3 more

          Yeah. Technically I suppose you could describe it as a fish sauce but definitely more on the umami and vinegar side. I'm also not sure the degree to which Worcestershire Sauce is especially a mainstream American condiment. I have a jar in my cupboard. Not sure how many houses do.

          • jandrewrogers ・ 10 hours ago

            Worcestershire is a mainstream condiment in America. There is a pretty diverse range of American cuisine that has it as a common ingredient.

            You don’t use much when you use it but I somehow go through a bottle every couple years.

          • duped ・ 8 hours ago

            But barbecue sauce with it absolutely is

  • stackghost ・ 10 hours ago

    Put it in tomato sauce for pasta. Just a tablespoon or so.

    • stackghost ・ 7 hours ago

      Okay I know we're not supposed to complain about downvotes but c'mon it's actually delicious, doesn't taste like fish, and just adds umami. Don't knock it until you try it!

      • jandrewrogers ・ 6 hours ago

        I didn’t downvote you but fish sauce does taste strongly like rancid fish to some people, even in trace quantities. Nothing about that flavor profile is delicious. There is nothing stealthy about it either if you are one of those people; you can immediately detect that disgusting note on the first bite.

        I love anchovies and use a lot of them in many of the dishes I cook (including tomato sauce). Fish sauce ruins everything it touches for me. It isn’t lack of exposure either; I lived on Vietnamese home-cooking for many years. I eat a lot of weird and pungent things but I have no context for why anyone would want to put that fish sauce in their food. Also, some types of fish sauce from around the world don’t have this effect for whatever reason.

        I’m pretty sure from observation that it is gene-linked thing, like the cilantro sensitivity. While rare, even some Vietnamese people seem to fall into this set and it is part of their cuisine.

skipkey ・ 9 hours ago

So the West still does have a fish sauce in common use, although one that's not nearly as strong as the eastern variants. Worcestershire sauce was an attempt to recreate an Indian fish sauce, and to this day contains anchovies.

  • klik99 ・ 8 hours ago

    Ketchup also has origins from fish sauce

    • wahnfrieden ・ 8 hours ago

      Colatura di alici is very much in use in the west…

      • ggm ・ 8 hours ago
        ・ 3 more

        I found the 'not common' comment in the original article quite confounding. It is somewhat specific, yes But the general sense "anchovies and anchovy paste adds umami" is really strongly established. So it's become much more specific, but it still exists.

        • GavinMcG ・ 7 hours ago
          ・ 2 more

          I wouldn’t imagine most people consider anchovy paste a sauce?

          • ggm ・ 7 hours ago

            "sauce" is such an imprecise concept. Fish Sauce is a condiment. Anchovy paste is often used as a condiment/additive e.g. on a ceaser salad, or to perk up a pizza.

            Fish sauce is added to soups, to dishes during cooking as well as at the end. Dressing a papaya salad with a fish sauce heavy dressing is only one way of using it, we use it to make dipping sauces.

            We also use Anchovy paste as an ingredient in other dipping sauces, and dressings for salads. And we add it to meat dishes much as worcestershire sauce is: given its an ingredient along with Tamarind, it's much the same thing.

            In Britain, it's a posh paste to spread on toast, much as we use Vegemite or Marmite. Anchovy toast was an afternoon tea thing.

            I think, it's pretty sauce like. If not, I think it's a fundamental ingredient of sauces people reach over to use directly.

youngprogrammer ・ 7 hours ago

Fish sauce is delicious but had to stop using it since it's high in histamine (gives me a stuffy nose) and potentially carcinogenic due to its high levels of nitrosamines

cs02rm0 ・ 4 hours ago

A couple of years ago I planned a road trip I've yet to take, from where I live in Worcestershire, passing through Malaga where they have a glass pyramid in front of a Roman theatre that shows the basins that were used for making garum.

Worcestershire sauce is a descendent of garum.

nunez ・ 4 hours ago

> One such food historian, Sally Grainger, notes in her 2021 book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World that despite discussions of Roman fish sauce in many publications, Roman fish sauce is not actually Roman at all: it’s Greek.

this seems to be a trope. Mark Kurlansky (who is cited later in this fantastic article!) wrote an excellent book called “Cheesecake” whose central plot line concerns a bakery trying to make Cato’s cheesecake, a cheesecake often recognized as the “first” cheesecake for whom a recipe was published. Except the bakery/restaurant is Greek, and the owners, who are also Greeks, are convinced that the Romans stole this recipe from them.

As for the liquid gold itself: fish sauce is unbelievable. Elevates dishes as much as its smell nauseates. I was shocked to learn that fish sauce is legitimate just fish and salt!

rcakebread ・ 11 hours ago

I'm just here to thank Kenji for making me try fish sauce.

robocat ・ 10 hours ago

I vividly remember the reek of a fish sauce factory in Vietnam.

I highly recommend avoiding going anywhere near them.

Magi604 ・ 9 hours ago

Wow, Legalnomads! Happy to see her pop up here. Way back in the day when I used to backpack and freelance she had a very big online presence in the internet hustler community. I just read through her recent history and I'm sad for her recent health issues, but glad she's still pushing through.

IamTC ・ 9 hours ago

Try fish sauce with pasta sauces. Next level.

  • 01100011 ・ 8 hours ago

    I put some in the ground beef when I make burgers.

ggm ・ 8 hours ago

I wish somebody would do this for "Smen" from North Africa, and trace it's lineage and relationship.

I'm told if you want a sense of it, add knobs of soft blue cheese to your cuscous.

saysjonathan ・ 12 hours ago

Homemade garum is a fun kitchen experiment, if you have the equipment and patience. Heat + protease + protein substrate is really all you need.

  • valzevul ・ 11 hours ago

    On that note, the easiest way to get your hands on some protease is to buy digestive enzymes sold as food supplements (most often they're made out of dried pork pancreas).

    You also don't need much equipment: scales and an immersion circulator should do the trick.

  • solomonb ・ 6 hours ago

    I think all you need is salt, fish, and a clay jar?

    • saysjonathan ・ an hour ago

      For fish sauce definitely, assuming you also use the guts so you can get the enzymes. If you want to make with a protein source that doesn't have the enzymes present, like mushrooms, you can add them separately. Whole fish just fills the protein and protease slots with a single ingredient.

  • dbg31415 ・ 8 hours ago

    Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not make this if you have neighbors.

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R1Hq3WEqVeI

    The video claims the smell is not "entirely unpleasant" but that's a lie. It is the most disgusting smell I have ever encountered. And I used to have to shovel manure and clean chicken coops growing up. Once I even had to dig a dead racoon out of the guts of a square baler after it got run over and jammed up the machinery and then sat for a few days in the summer heat. Garum smells worse.

tcper ・ 10 hours ago

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