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Did fish sauce in Vietnam come from ancient Rome via the Silk Road?

104 points by Thevet 6y ago

ipsum2 6y ago
Surprised they didn't mention Worcestershire sauce, which has very similar flavor profiles to sauce used in Thai cuisine. Edit: Worcestershire sauce's flavor comes from fermented fish + tamarind, which also are two major ingredients in Thai/Vietnamese cooking.
- ska 6y ago
  Do you think Worcestershire is particularly close compared to other fish sauces? I don't really but I'm hardly "fluent" in thai cooking. Fish sauce seems plausibly one of those commonly re-invented things.
  - mrob 6y ago
    It's not very similar. The fish in Worcestershire sauce is mild enough that you might not notice it if you didn't know it was there. It's vinegar + molasses + tamarind + salt + sugar + spices, with the fish just there for added umami taste. Thai fish sauce is only fish + salt + sugar, and it's unmistakably made from fish.
    - ska 6y ago
      Agree the fish sauce itself is clearly different, but I'm less confident about the flavor profile as a whole. Maybe that's just because of the tamarind though.
      - mark-r 6y ago
        I have a Pad Thai recipe that calls for both fish sauce and tamarind paste. Do you think there's some connection?
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  that's so, but the legend is "lee and perrins were told to recreate a thing that the governor of bengal's wife had liked when they were in india, thought they failed, let it ferment, then claimed victory", which isn't quite Thailand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_sauce#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_sauce#History
- OJFord 6y ago
  Is it actually fermented fish? I happened to be looking at its ingredients earlier this evening before I saw this post (really! wild evening) and it merely lists 'anchovies'. The top two ingredients are vinegars, which suggests to me the flavour's approximated by pickling (cf. cucumbers, kimchi/sauerkraut/coleslaws, etc.) rather than merely a preservative.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hprotagonist 6y ago
Stranger things have happened. Like the viking buddha: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki... material goods travel farther than the people who made them. And we are increasingly finding that it was the case that ancient and medieval trade routes were generally longer and more robust than we had once believed.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Reportedly there are villages along the Silk Road in remote western China, where some people are blond haired, blue eyed, descendants of lost (or decided-to-settle) traders or soldiers from centuries ago. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8154490/Chinese-villagers-descended-from-Roman-soldiers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/815449...
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    the "roman lost legion" thing is probably mythical. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-needed-to-explain-chinese-blondes https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-need...
    - supernova87a 6y ago
      Ah, interesting. Well, yes, UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source.
      - mattlondon 6y ago
        > UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source. Why not? As far as I am aware it is a legitimate and decent journalistic news source. It might have a political leaning, but for this sort of reporting I don't think it would give their preferred political party and leverage.
      - OJFord 6y ago
eindiran 6y ago
This video covers how you can make garum using a modernized version of a surviving recipe from the Geoponica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE
jrochkind1 6y ago
> Believed to have medicinal properties, garum was used as a disinfectant, eye and ear cleanser, to treat burns and dog bites, and to fight high cholesterol. Wait, the ancient Romans somehow knew about cholesterol? Um.
- centimeter 6y ago
  I had the same question; is that supposed to be a euphemism for obesity or something?
- Bud 6y ago
  The Romans did have some knowledge and understanding of heart disease and apparently at least tried to use various plants and such to enhance cardiac health. I can't find anything about cholesterol specifically, but it's not out of the realm of the possible...
abrowne 6y ago
As some of the skeptics in the article say, we can't be sure there's no link, but there doesn't need to be a link to explain having similar sauces in the two regions. If you have fish, salt, sun and a lack of refrigeration, you are going to have fermented fish soon enough.
- eindiran 6y ago
  It does seem like it may be a case of culinary convergent evolution: I'd wager that anything involving fermentation/brewing/pickling/salt preservation is likely to be discovered multiple times by its nature.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Good thing patents are such a recent invention.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - est31 6y ago
      Patents are only valid for at most 20 years. On historic timescales, that's nothing.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
        And on current time tables that can be everything.
        est31 6y ago
        Sure, today, it means a lot that e.g. e-ink screen technology is patented. But once the patents run out there will likely be a cambrian explosion. In the 2040s, who will care about it? Do we care which semiconductor company in SV had a tiny edge over another company 50 years ago? There is so much acquisition, merging and bankruptcy going on that in 200 years, the landscape will be different. Check how many companies managed to stay in the DJIA since its founding in 1896.
draw_down 6y ago
It is kind of strange to link it with Rome over China. Occam's razor and all that. But, I thought the production and end product of garum were not known today? We know how much Romans loved it, but I thought nobody knew exactly how it was made or its texture, etc. One thing that stuck out to me: > the flavoursome dip was the second most expensive liquid on the market after perfumes, and is said to have had an unexpectedly pleasant smell. It developed a nasty smell only after it had become foul As much as I love eating things flavored with fish sauce, its smell is... rank. It smells terrible, but it tastes great.
- eindiran 6y ago
  There are surviving garum recipes from the Geoponica - see page 329 here: https://archive.org/details/Geoponica02 https://archive.org/details/Geoponica02
thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
>Nuoc mam If you're going to ignore the way it's actually spelled, why not just use the translation anyway? The way English speakers (like me) treat other countries' alphabets is bizarre.
- eindiran 6y ago
  Are you referring to the missing diacritical marks? (nước mắm) "Nuoc mam" is much less ambiguous than using "fish sauce", so using the translation seems like a lot of precision is lost. Plus, "nuoc mam" is the standard romanization of "nước mắm", which is admittedly difficult to type on QWERTY keyboards + en-* locales. If you're talking about "nước chấm", as far as I know that is a class of dipping sauces that include things besides just "nước mắm"[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce#Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce#Vietnam
  - thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
    The whole language is already a romanization. If the diacritics didn't contain useful information, they wouldn't exist. I can understand writing without diacritics when writing informally - even Vietnamese people do that - but in something published I would hope they'd go through the effort of committing to the English or the Vietnamese name. Nuoc mam is neither, it's a placeholder that says "we don't want to sound low-market by saying 'Vietnamese fish sauce', but we also don't care about being correct". It's not like Chinese characters, where it needs to be romanized for English speakers to recognise it: if we see nước mắm in sequential sentences, we'll know it's talking about the same thing even if we don't remember the diacritics. These will be things from SMCP's style guide and will be shared by many other publications, because it's the way most of us treat other languages. There's a similar treatement of name order. I think the style shows disregard for the languages and cultures, so I don't like it.
    - eindiran 6y ago
      The additional information contained in the diacritics is essentially useless to English speakers: they certainly aren't going to get the tones right and the dipthong "ướ" has no equivalent sound in English. Vietnamese speakers themselves frequently elide diacritics as you point out, so you aren't really hurting anyone's comprehension. Diacritics are pretty rare in English publications for the most part: most drop diacritics even off of the English words that technically should have them: cliché, crêpe, façade, piñata, protégé, résumé, risqué... Even the New Yorker, with its famously persnickety style guide, drops the tone diacritics from Vietnamese dish names: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/van-das-tour-of-vietnamese-delicacies https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/van-das-tour-o... Outside of this, I think the point about "nuoc mam" being the standard (complete) romanization still stands: it is common enough that some common English dictionaries have added it (eg https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuoc%20mam https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuoc%20mam and https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nuoc-mam https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nuoc-ma...). This is quite a common occurrence in languages which use the Latin alphabet + additional letters: most speakers of German are used to seeing "ß" become "ss" in English publications. I can see why you interpret this as a disregard for other languages, but people are more likely to try to say these words if they think the word is easily pronounceable. And using the word makes the foods, places, names, etc of other cultures more likely to be shared and become a part of the common parlance; I'd go so far as to say that having an anglicized form of a name means that it is much more likely to become a common thing in the Anglophone world, which breeds greater appreciation of other cultures.
droidno9 6y ago
Phu Quoc is the most famous place in Vietnam that makes nuoc mam. The first press of aged nuoc mam is highly prized by connoisseurs, but almost impossible to use without first diluting it with water, as it is very salty and pungent. With the right ratio of water, lime juice, and sugar, nuoc mam is the perfect dipping sauce for much of Vietnamese cuisine. Knowing this, you'd be able to guess with good accuracy if a dish had Chinese origin, because the dish would be offered with a soy sauce-based dipping sauce instead. P.S. Phu Quoc itself is a lovely place to enjoy the freshest seafood of all varieties on the cheap. Rent a motorbike and you would be able to see most of the island in just a few days.
- huac 6y ago
  red boat fish sauce is a relatively accessible brand in America, made in phu quoc (https://redboatfishsauce.com/pages/about https://redboatfishsauce.com/pages/about)
  - droidno9 6y ago
    Ditto. This is my go-to fish sauce. That said, it should be used as a dipping sauce and not for cooking. There are cheaper fish sauce for cooking from Vietnam or Thailand. Just make sure there are only three ingredients used to make the sauce: anchovies, salt, and water. An easy way to tell if a fish sauce is of decent quality is by looking for the degrees number on the front and these three ingredients on the back.
    - bpicolo 6y ago
      > Just make sure there are only three ingredients used to make the sauce: anchovies, salt, and water Almost all of the other, especially the cheaper sauces, have additional ingredients. + fructose & hydrolyzed wheat protein for three crabs, for example
    - madengr 6y ago
      I have tried Red Boat, but still prefer Three Crabs. It’s supposed to be lower quality, but I think it tastes better.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
I'm surprised the idea of independent discovery is so easily explained away in modern history. The recipe calls for fish + salt left for a period of time. This could have been done by someone simply trying to preserve fish, not necessarily make a sauce.
- virtue3 6y ago
  I mean... sure, programming is just putting together 0 + 1 and calling it a day too. I think you're severely downplaying how unlikely it is that this was just "done". It smells like death, so it would be unlikely anyone would necessarily want to eat it in the first place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE
markthien 6y ago
I guess it came from Antarctica
williesleg 6y ago
Noit was Kroger.
every 6y ago
Was the culture maritime? Did the culture have their own practice or nearby examples of fermentation? Is there some specific or difficult part of the process that is unique? Does fish fermentation occur in areas with no ties to Southeast Asia or the Mediterranean? I would want to answer these questions before speculating on any possible links. [Disclaimer] I did just this sort of thing researching the possible gold links between Schliemann's Troy and the Royal Graves at Ur as a student...
flatfilefan 6y ago
Samurai and Samariter, Magadan and Maria Magdalena, are they related as well?
DonaldFisk 6y ago
They're very similar, and when I cooked Ancient Roman recipes I used Thai fish sauce (nam pla, Squid Brand) in place of liquamen (garum). Nuoc mam is much the same thing as nam pla. So is colatura, which is still made in Italy. Though there was indirect contact with China, from where they obtained silk, and India, from where they obtained pepper, I'm unaware of any direct contact between Ancient Rome and South East Asia, and I'm skeptical the recipe somehow made its way as far as Vietnam and Thailand. I think it's more likely they arrived at the same recipe independently. Here's the production method for liquamen. It was done on an industrial scale and listed as an ingredient in the recipes of Apicius: From A Taste of Ancient Rome, p. 27: Ancient sources contain countless recipes for the preparation of garum, also known as muria or liquamen. The most complete is provided by Gargilius Martialis, a writer from the third century A.D. Use fatty fish, for example sardines, and a well-sealed (pitched) container with a 26-35 quart/liter capacity. Add dried aromatic herbs possessing a strong flavor, such as dill, coriander, fennel, celery, mint, oregano, and others making a layer on the bottom of the container; then put down a layer of fish (if small leave them whole, if large use pieces); and over this add a layer of salt two fingers high. Repeat these three layers until the container is filled. Let it rest for seven days in the sun. Then mix the sauce daily for twenty days. After that time it becomes a liquid (garum). -- Gargilius Martialis, De medicina et de virtute herbarum From "Geoponica" (20.46.1-6), as cited by Robert I. Curtis, Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (New York: E. J. Brill, 1991): The so-called liquamen is made in this manner: the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted. Small fish, either the best smelt, or small mullet, or sprats, or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small, are all salted together and, shaken frequently, are fermented in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat, garum is obtained from it in this way: a large, strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish, and the garum streams into the basket. In this way the so-called liquamen is strained through the basket when it is taken up. The remaining refuse is alex. The Bithynians prepare it in this manner: It is best if you take small or large sprats, but if not, wolffish, or horse-mackerel, or mackerel, or even alica, and a mixture of all, and throw these into a baker's kneading trough, in which the are accustomed to knead meal. Tossing into the modius of fish two Italian sextarii of salt, mix up thoroughly in order to strengthen it with salt. After leaving it alone for one night throw it into a vessel and place it without a lid in the sun for two or three months, agitating it with a shaft at intervals. Next take it, cover it, and store it away. Some add to one sextarius of fish, two sextarii of old wine. Next, if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is to say not ferment it in the sun, but to boil it, you do it this way. When the brine has been tested, so that an egg having been thrown in floats (if it sinks, it is not sufficiently salt), and throwing the fish into the brine in a newly-made earthenware pot and adding in some oregano, you place it on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is until it begins to reduce a little. Some throw in boiled-down must. Next, throwing the cooled liquid into a filter you toss it a second, and a third time through the filter until it turns out clear. After having covered it, store it away. The best garum, the so-called haimation, is made in this way: the intestines of tunny along with the gills, juice and blood are taken and sufficient salt is sprinkled on. After having left it alone in the vessel for two months at most, pierce the vessel and the garum, called haimation, is withdrawn.
danans 6y ago
The article makes the assumption that the direction was from Rome to Vietnam and not the other way around, yet provides no hard evidence. The far more plausible explanation is that it developed in both places independently given that both places have plenty of fish and warm weather, and at some point, during the silk road era, the two independent developments linked up.
- Thorentis 6y ago
  There's nothing far more plausible about your explanation. If anything, two events occurring is less likely than one, given that plenty of other cultures didn't create fish sauce and yet had an abundance of fish nearby.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  What makes that "far more plausible", plenty of warm places that eat lots of fish don't have traditional fish sauces.
  - danans 6y ago
    Fish sauce to one culture is spoiled salty fish water to another. It's hardly a universal taste. And I'm not biased, I love the stuff. Also, a huge number of cultures have a tradition of eating dried salted fish. Turning that into fish sauce is just dropping those into some water.
- tpm 6y ago
  The evidence is that (according to another book, The Noma Guide to Fermentation) there is no known mention of fish sauces in south/east Asia before 7th century AD, while in the West it's well documented starting in the 5th century BC. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is however not an history book and is not written by historians, and anyway that's not hard evidence.
mesozoic 6y ago
It was just fish when they started the shipment, rotted on the way. Hey why not eat it anyway?
babesh 6y ago
Not sure about Vietnam but Southern China is very big on fermentation, pickling, and salting and doing that to most every food: fish, vegetables, eggs, etc... It’s quite possible it came from Rome but the basic techniques are deeply embedded in the culture. I suspect that it is the case for most cultures in that region of the world.
peteretep 6y ago
In Thailand, I like to eat Sriracha sauce. The type I get at the supermarket, it's been manufactured in the US by Vietnamese immigrants, and then imported to Thailand, but of course Sriracha (ศรีราชา) is actually a place in Thailand (and the ultimate origin of the sauce, where it was created by _Burmese_ immigrants), so quite how I'm ending up eating American-Thai Burmese sauce via Vietnam in Thailand I'm hoping will give future archeologists food for thought.
- pepicon 6y ago
  Not to mention that the pepper is originally from Mexico
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  Look for Thai Dancer instead of Hui Fong?
- kanwisher 6y ago
  Sriracha sauce in Thailand has nothing in common with the American version beyond name. They don’t remotely taste the same
  - kyawzazaw 6y ago
    Similar to how Red Bull in Thailand and Red Bull in the west taste completely different?
    - wiennat 6y ago
      Red Bull in Thailand and in the west come from the same origin, Chaleo Yoovidhya, the Red Bull founder. The west Sriracha was developed by a Vietnam immigrant. You can see his recipe as one of many available Sriracha variants at that time.
- deleted 6y ago
dnprock 6y ago
I'd make the case that fish sauces were independently developed by different cultures. I think historians are overly trying to make connections in this case. Fish sauce is very simple. You only need two ingredients: fish and salt. Any cultures living near an ocean can independently develop some version of fish sauce. If there's any link between Vietnam and Rome, we'd have found traces of them along the Silk Road or maritime routes. In Vietnam, besides fish sauce, there are other sauces "mam" made from different fishes and seafoods. Vietnamese people may have developed these "mam" before they developed the current fish sauce. Their fish sauce may have come from other "mam" than Rome. Side note: The article appears on South China Morning Post. China often sees Vietnam as barbaric, inferior. Maybe, they couldn't see how Vietnamese could invent such a good sauce. :)
- zethus 6y ago
  I share you general thoughts on this being a stretch and feeling somewhat euro-centric. The article author, fwiw, is "a Rome-based freelance reporter".
  - mrscottson 6y ago
    Simple test, do Europeans eat more fish than Asians, Africans? I find it highly likely that such fish recipes emerged from places with direct access to the world's spices and that consumed a large % of the world's fish. If I had to guess, it would be East or South East Asia...places that have a long history of preserving fish. From my understanding, even at Rome's population peak, India & China both had larger populations. Due to religious practices, I suspect a larger percentage of those populations consumed fish regularly.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Throwing shade at SCMP by alleging some kind of anti-Vietnamess bias is unwarranted: it's the best newspaper in Hong Kong and arguably one of the best in all Asia. Alas, one of the many tragedies of Hong Kong's current political situation is that the SCMP is also going to get neutered though :(
  - 6y ago
aaron695 6y ago
I'm confused. They don't seem to be talking about prahok or mam nem. These seem far more likely to be imported or have a complex history since they are fking disgusting but very popular. Unlike fish sauce which seems pretty meh. I remember eating dog in a restaurant in Vietnam, which is very expensive and mostly done for health occasionally by locals and they had it with what I think was mam nem because it's a special meal and I had to check if there was an open sewer, I hoped up and went to the window and searched the room to find the smell.
codezero 6y ago
This is off topic, but during my obsession with the discovery of the Everest route in 1921, I was fascinated to learn that at that time there were Tibetan and Nepalese (or just one sorry, need to fact check) that had elements of Greek culture embedded in their leadership roles, holding a conch and a trident, on a mountain! So neat that these cultural quirks could last so long, assuming it really is a relic of some cultural sharing.
contingencies 6y ago
I am shocked that neither the article nor the discussion mentions that there were second century Roman trade artifacts recovered by French archeologists at Oc Eo[0] on the Mekong delta[1] (ancient Champa[2]; now An Giang, Vietnam). Champa was the major pre-Vietnamese society in Vietnam and Cambodia whose probable regional trading partners essentially correspond to the SEA cultural sphere currently using fish sauce. Apparently Columbus tried to reach it at one point! [3] Asian ancient history is fascinating. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo [1] https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/3248251 https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/3248251 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champa [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo#Columbus'_search_for_Ciamba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo#Columbus'_search_fo...

104 points by Thevet 6y ago

Surprised they didn't mention Worcestershire sauce, which has very similar flavor profiles to sauce used in Thai cuisine. Edit: Worcestershire sauce's flavor comes from fermented fish + tamarind, which also are two major ingredients in Thai/Vietnamese cooking.

ska 6y ago
Do you think Worcestershire is particularly close compared to other fish sauces? I don't really but I'm hardly "fluent" in thai cooking. Fish sauce seems plausibly one of those commonly re-invented things.
- mrob 6y ago
  It's not very similar. The fish in Worcestershire sauce is mild enough that you might not notice it if you didn't know it was there. It's vinegar + molasses + tamarind + salt + sugar + spices, with the fish just there for added umami taste. Thai fish sauce is only fish + salt + sugar, and it's unmistakably made from fish.
  - ska 6y ago
    Agree the fish sauce itself is clearly different, but I'm less confident about the flavor profile as a whole. Maybe that's just because of the tamarind though.
    - mark-r 6y ago
      I have a Pad Thai recipe that calls for both fish sauce and tamarind paste. Do you think there's some connection?
hprotagonist 6y ago
that's so, but the legend is "lee and perrins were told to recreate a thing that the governor of bengal's wife had liked when they were in india, thought they failed, let it ferment, then claimed victory", which isn't quite Thailand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_sauce#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcestershire_sauce#History
OJFord 6y ago
Is it actually fermented fish? I happened to be looking at its ingredients earlier this evening before I saw this post (really! wild evening) and it merely lists 'anchovies'. The top two ingredients are vinegars, which suggests to me the flavour's approximated by pickling (cf. cucumbers, kimchi/sauerkraut/coleslaws, etc.) rather than merely a preservative.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hprotagonist 6y ago

Stranger things have happened. Like the viking buddha: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki... material goods travel farther than the people who made them. And we are increasingly finding that it was the case that ancient and medieval trade routes were generally longer and more robust than we had once believed.

supernova87a 6y ago
Reportedly there are villages along the Silk Road in remote western China, where some people are blond haired, blue eyed, descendants of lost (or decided-to-settle) traders or soldiers from centuries ago. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8154490/Chinese-villagers-descended-from-Roman-soldiers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/815449...
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  the "roman lost legion" thing is probably mythical. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-needed-to-explain-chinese-blondes https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-need...
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Ah, interesting. Well, yes, UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source.
    - mattlondon 6y ago
      > UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source. Why not? As far as I am aware it is a legitimate and decent journalistic news source. It might have a political leaning, but for this sort of reporting I don't think it would give their preferred political party and leverage.
    - OJFord 6y ago

eindiran 6y ago

This video covers how you can make garum using a modernized version of a surviving recipe from the Geoponica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE

jrochkind1 6y ago

> Believed to have medicinal properties, garum was used as a disinfectant, eye and ear cleanser, to treat burns and dog bites, and to fight high cholesterol. Wait, the ancient Romans somehow knew about cholesterol? Um.

centimeter 6y ago
I had the same question; is that supposed to be a euphemism for obesity or something?
Bud 6y ago
The Romans did have some knowledge and understanding of heart disease and apparently at least tried to use various plants and such to enhance cardiac health. I can't find anything about cholesterol specifically, but it's not out of the realm of the possible...

abrowne 6y ago

As some of the skeptics in the article say, we can't be sure there's no link, but there doesn't need to be a link to explain having similar sauces in the two regions. If you have fish, salt, sun and a lack of refrigeration, you are going to have fermented fish soon enough.

eindiran 6y ago
It does seem like it may be a case of culinary convergent evolution: I'd wager that anything involving fermentation/brewing/pickling/salt preservation is likely to be discovered multiple times by its nature.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Good thing patents are such a recent invention.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - est31 6y ago
    Patents are only valid for at most 20 years. On historic timescales, that's nothing.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      And on current time tables that can be everything.
      - est31 6y ago
        Sure, today, it means a lot that e.g. e-ink screen technology is patented. But once the patents run out there will likely be a cambrian explosion. In the 2040s, who will care about it? Do we care which semiconductor company in SV had a tiny edge over another company 50 years ago? There is so much acquisition, merging and bankruptcy going on that in 200 years, the landscape will be different. Check how many companies managed to stay in the DJIA since its founding in 1896.

draw_down 6y ago

It is kind of strange to link it with Rome over China. Occam's razor and all that. But, I thought the production and end product of garum were not known today? We know how much Romans loved it, but I thought nobody knew exactly how it was made or its texture, etc. One thing that stuck out to me: > the flavoursome dip was the second most expensive liquid on the market after perfumes, and is said to have had an unexpectedly pleasant smell. It developed a nasty smell only after it had become foul As much as I love eating things flavored with fish sauce, its smell is... rank. It smells terrible, but it tastes great.

eindiran 6y ago
There are surviving garum recipes from the Geoponica - see page 329 here: https://archive.org/details/Geoponica02 https://archive.org/details/Geoponica02

thrwyoilarticle 6y ago

>Nuoc mam If you're going to ignore the way it's actually spelled, why not just use the translation anyway? The way English speakers (like me) treat other countries' alphabets is bizarre.

eindiran 6y ago
Are you referring to the missing diacritical marks? (nước mắm) "Nuoc mam" is much less ambiguous than using "fish sauce", so using the translation seems like a lot of precision is lost. Plus, "nuoc mam" is the standard romanization of "nước mắm", which is admittedly difficult to type on QWERTY keyboards + en-* locales. If you're talking about "nước chấm", as far as I know that is a class of dipping sauces that include things besides just "nước mắm"[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce#Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_sauce#Vietnam
- thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
  The whole language is already a romanization. If the diacritics didn't contain useful information, they wouldn't exist. I can understand writing without diacritics when writing informally - even Vietnamese people do that - but in something published I would hope they'd go through the effort of committing to the English or the Vietnamese name. Nuoc mam is neither, it's a placeholder that says "we don't want to sound low-market by saying 'Vietnamese fish sauce', but we also don't care about being correct". It's not like Chinese characters, where it needs to be romanized for English speakers to recognise it: if we see nước mắm in sequential sentences, we'll know it's talking about the same thing even if we don't remember the diacritics. These will be things from SMCP's style guide and will be shared by many other publications, because it's the way most of us treat other languages. There's a similar treatement of name order. I think the style shows disregard for the languages and cultures, so I don't like it.
  - eindiran 6y ago
    The additional information contained in the diacritics is essentially useless to English speakers: they certainly aren't going to get the tones right and the dipthong "ướ" has no equivalent sound in English. Vietnamese speakers themselves frequently elide diacritics as you point out, so you aren't really hurting anyone's comprehension. Diacritics are pretty rare in English publications for the most part: most drop diacritics even off of the English words that technically should have them: cliché, crêpe, façade, piñata, protégé, résumé, risqué... Even the New Yorker, with its famously persnickety style guide, drops the tone diacritics from Vietnamese dish names: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/van-das-tour-of-vietnamese-delicacies https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/van-das-tour-o... Outside of this, I think the point about "nuoc mam" being the standard (complete) romanization still stands: it is common enough that some common English dictionaries have added it (eg https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuoc%20mam https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuoc%20mam and https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nuoc-mam https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nuoc-ma...). This is quite a common occurrence in languages which use the Latin alphabet + additional letters: most speakers of German are used to seeing "ß" become "ss" in English publications. I can see why you interpret this as a disregard for other languages, but people are more likely to try to say these words if they think the word is easily pronounceable. And using the word makes the foods, places, names, etc of other cultures more likely to be shared and become a part of the common parlance; I'd go so far as to say that having an anglicized form of a name means that it is much more likely to become a common thing in the Anglophone world, which breeds greater appreciation of other cultures.

droidno9 6y ago

Phu Quoc is the most famous place in Vietnam that makes nuoc mam. The first press of aged nuoc mam is highly prized by connoisseurs, but almost impossible to use without first diluting it with water, as it is very salty and pungent. With the right ratio of water, lime juice, and sugar, nuoc mam is the perfect dipping sauce for much of Vietnamese cuisine. Knowing this, you'd be able to guess with good accuracy if a dish had Chinese origin, because the dish would be offered with a soy sauce-based dipping sauce instead. P.S. Phu Quoc itself is a lovely place to enjoy the freshest seafood of all varieties on the cheap. Rent a motorbike and you would be able to see most of the island in just a few days.

huac 6y ago
red boat fish sauce is a relatively accessible brand in America, made in phu quoc (https://redboatfishsauce.com/pages/about https://redboatfishsauce.com/pages/about)
- droidno9 6y ago
  Ditto. This is my go-to fish sauce. That said, it should be used as a dipping sauce and not for cooking. There are cheaper fish sauce for cooking from Vietnam or Thailand. Just make sure there are only three ingredients used to make the sauce: anchovies, salt, and water. An easy way to tell if a fish sauce is of decent quality is by looking for the degrees number on the front and these three ingredients on the back.
  - bpicolo 6y ago
    > Just make sure there are only three ingredients used to make the sauce: anchovies, salt, and water Almost all of the other, especially the cheaper sauces, have additional ingredients. + fructose & hydrolyzed wheat protein for three crabs, for example
  - madengr 6y ago
    I have tried Red Boat, but still prefer Three Crabs. It’s supposed to be lower quality, but I think it tastes better.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

I'm surprised the idea of independent discovery is so easily explained away in modern history. The recipe calls for fish + salt left for a period of time. This could have been done by someone simply trying to preserve fish, not necessarily make a sauce.

virtue3 6y ago
I mean... sure, programming is just putting together 0 + 1 and calling it a day too. I think you're severely downplaying how unlikely it is that this was just "done". It smells like death, so it would be unlikely anyone would necessarily want to eat it in the first place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE

markthien 6y ago

I guess it came from Antarctica

williesleg 6y ago

Noit was Kroger.

every 6y ago

Was the culture maritime? Did the culture have their own practice or nearby examples of fermentation? Is there some specific or difficult part of the process that is unique? Does fish fermentation occur in areas with no ties to Southeast Asia or the Mediterranean? I would want to answer these questions before speculating on any possible links. [Disclaimer] I did just this sort of thing researching the possible gold links between Schliemann's Troy and the Royal Graves at Ur as a student...

flatfilefan 6y ago

Samurai and Samariter, Magadan and Maria Magdalena, are they related as well?

DonaldFisk 6y ago

They're very similar, and when I cooked Ancient Roman recipes I used Thai fish sauce (nam pla, Squid Brand) in place of liquamen (garum). Nuoc mam is much the same thing as nam pla. So is colatura, which is still made in Italy. Though there was indirect contact with China, from where they obtained silk, and India, from where they obtained pepper, I'm unaware of any direct contact between Ancient Rome and South East Asia, and I'm skeptical the recipe somehow made its way as far as Vietnam and Thailand. I think it's more likely they arrived at the same recipe independently. Here's the production method for liquamen. It was done on an industrial scale and listed as an ingredient in the recipes of Apicius: From A Taste of Ancient Rome, p. 27: Ancient sources contain countless recipes for the preparation of garum, also known as muria or liquamen. The most complete is provided by Gargilius Martialis, a writer from the third century A.D. Use fatty fish, for example sardines, and a well-sealed (pitched) container with a 26-35 quart/liter capacity. Add dried aromatic herbs possessing a strong flavor, such as dill, coriander, fennel, celery, mint, oregano, and others making a layer on the bottom of the container; then put down a layer of fish (if small leave them whole, if large use pieces); and over this add a layer of salt two fingers high. Repeat these three layers until the container is filled. Let it rest for seven days in the sun. Then mix the sauce daily for twenty days. After that time it becomes a liquid (garum). -- Gargilius Martialis, De medicina et de virtute herbarum From "Geoponica" (20.46.1-6), as cited by Robert I. Curtis, Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica (New York: E. J. Brill, 1991): The so-called liquamen is made in this manner: the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted. Small fish, either the best smelt, or small mullet, or sprats, or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small, are all salted together and, shaken frequently, are fermented in the sun. After it has been reduced in the heat, garum is obtained from it in this way: a large, strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish, and the garum streams into the basket. In this way the so-called liquamen is strained through the basket when it is taken up. The remaining refuse is alex. The Bithynians prepare it in this manner: It is best if you take small or large sprats, but if not, wolffish, or horse-mackerel, or mackerel, or even alica, and a mixture of all, and throw these into a baker's kneading trough, in which the are accustomed to knead meal. Tossing into the modius of fish two Italian sextarii of salt, mix up thoroughly in order to strengthen it with salt. After leaving it alone for one night throw it into a vessel and place it without a lid in the sun for two or three months, agitating it with a shaft at intervals. Next take it, cover it, and store it away. Some add to one sextarius of fish, two sextarii of old wine. Next, if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is to say not ferment it in the sun, but to boil it, you do it this way. When the brine has been tested, so that an egg having been thrown in floats (if it sinks, it is not sufficiently salt), and throwing the fish into the brine in a newly-made earthenware pot and adding in some oregano, you place it on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is until it begins to reduce a little. Some throw in boiled-down must. Next, throwing the cooled liquid into a filter you toss it a second, and a third time through the filter until it turns out clear. After having covered it, store it away. The best garum, the so-called haimation, is made in this way: the intestines of tunny along with the gills, juice and blood are taken and sufficient salt is sprinkled on. After having left it alone in the vessel for two months at most, pierce the vessel and the garum, called haimation, is withdrawn.

danans 6y ago

The article makes the assumption that the direction was from Rome to Vietnam and not the other way around, yet provides no hard evidence. The far more plausible explanation is that it developed in both places independently given that both places have plenty of fish and warm weather, and at some point, during the silk road era, the two independent developments linked up.

Thorentis 6y ago
There's nothing far more plausible about your explanation. If anything, two events occurring is less likely than one, given that plenty of other cultures didn't create fish sauce and yet had an abundance of fish nearby.
throwaway2048 6y ago
What makes that "far more plausible", plenty of warm places that eat lots of fish don't have traditional fish sauces.
- danans 6y ago
  Fish sauce to one culture is spoiled salty fish water to another. It's hardly a universal taste. And I'm not biased, I love the stuff. Also, a huge number of cultures have a tradition of eating dried salted fish. Turning that into fish sauce is just dropping those into some water.
tpm 6y ago
The evidence is that (according to another book, The Noma Guide to Fermentation) there is no known mention of fish sauces in south/east Asia before 7th century AD, while in the West it's well documented starting in the 5th century BC. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is however not an history book and is not written by historians, and anyway that's not hard evidence.

mesozoic 6y ago

It was just fish when they started the shipment, rotted on the way. Hey why not eat it anyway?

babesh 6y ago

Not sure about Vietnam but Southern China is very big on fermentation, pickling, and salting and doing that to most every food: fish, vegetables, eggs, etc... It’s quite possible it came from Rome but the basic techniques are deeply embedded in the culture. I suspect that it is the case for most cultures in that region of the world.

peteretep 6y ago

In Thailand, I like to eat Sriracha sauce. The type I get at the supermarket, it's been manufactured in the US by Vietnamese immigrants, and then imported to Thailand, but of course Sriracha (ศรีราชา) is actually a place in Thailand (and the ultimate origin of the sauce, where it was created by _Burmese_ immigrants), so quite how I'm ending up eating American-Thai Burmese sauce via Vietnam in Thailand I'm hoping will give future archeologists food for thought.

pepicon 6y ago
Not to mention that the pepper is originally from Mexico
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Look for Thai Dancer instead of Hui Fong?
kanwisher 6y ago
Sriracha sauce in Thailand has nothing in common with the American version beyond name. They don’t remotely taste the same
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  Similar to how Red Bull in Thailand and Red Bull in the west taste completely different?
  - wiennat 6y ago
    Red Bull in Thailand and in the west come from the same origin, Chaleo Yoovidhya, the Red Bull founder. The west Sriracha was developed by a Vietnam immigrant. You can see his recipe as one of many available Sriracha variants at that time.
deleted 6y ago

dnprock 6y ago

I'd make the case that fish sauces were independently developed by different cultures. I think historians are overly trying to make connections in this case. Fish sauce is very simple. You only need two ingredients: fish and salt. Any cultures living near an ocean can independently develop some version of fish sauce. If there's any link between Vietnam and Rome, we'd have found traces of them along the Silk Road or maritime routes. In Vietnam, besides fish sauce, there are other sauces "mam" made from different fishes and seafoods. Vietnamese people may have developed these "mam" before they developed the current fish sauce. Their fish sauce may have come from other "mam" than Rome. Side note: The article appears on South China Morning Post. China often sees Vietnam as barbaric, inferior. Maybe, they couldn't see how Vietnamese could invent such a good sauce. :)

zethus 6y ago
I share you general thoughts on this being a stretch and feeling somewhat euro-centric. The article author, fwiw, is "a Rome-based freelance reporter".
- mrscottson 6y ago
  Simple test, do Europeans eat more fish than Asians, Africans? I find it highly likely that such fish recipes emerged from places with direct access to the world's spices and that consumed a large % of the world's fish. If I had to guess, it would be East or South East Asia...places that have a long history of preserving fish. From my understanding, even at Rome's population peak, India & China both had larger populations. Due to religious practices, I suspect a larger percentage of those populations consumed fish regularly.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
Throwing shade at SCMP by alleging some kind of anti-Vietnamess bias is unwarranted: it's the best newspaper in Hong Kong and arguably one of the best in all Asia. Alas, one of the many tragedies of Hong Kong's current political situation is that the SCMP is also going to get neutered though :(
- 6y ago

aaron695 6y ago

I'm confused. They don't seem to be talking about prahok or mam nem. These seem far more likely to be imported or have a complex history since they are fking disgusting but very popular. Unlike fish sauce which seems pretty meh. I remember eating dog in a restaurant in Vietnam, which is very expensive and mostly done for health occasionally by locals and they had it with what I think was mam nem because it's a special meal and I had to check if there was an open sewer, I hoped up and went to the window and searched the room to find the smell.

codezero 6y ago

This is off topic, but during my obsession with the discovery of the Everest route in 1921, I was fascinated to learn that at that time there were Tibetan and Nepalese (or just one sorry, need to fact check) that had elements of Greek culture embedded in their leadership roles, holding a conch and a trident, on a mountain! So neat that these cultural quirks could last so long, assuming it really is a relic of some cultural sharing.

contingencies 6y ago

I am shocked that neither the article nor the discussion mentions that there were second century Roman trade artifacts recovered by French archeologists at Oc Eo[0] on the Mekong delta[1] (ancient Champa[2]; now An Giang, Vietnam). Champa was the major pre-Vietnamese society in Vietnam and Cambodia whose probable regional trading partners essentially correspond to the SEA cultural sphere currently using fish sauce. Apparently Columbus tried to reach it at one point! [3] Asian ancient history is fascinating. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo [1] https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/3248251 https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/3248251 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champa [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo#Columbus'_search_for_Ciamba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93c_Eo#Columbus'_search_fo...