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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. F

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 :(
- wyuenho 6y ago
  It has already been neutered since Jack Ma bought it a couple years ago. Have you read their editorials lately?
- rangibaby 6y ago
  Acting like an opposing nation copied (STOLE) something important to its cultural identity is a classic nationalist talking point. Here is the exact same article with Vietnam and fish sauce cut and pasted for Japan and sushi! https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3016361/sushi-not-japan-how-raw-fish-and-rice-became-world-favourite https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3016361/su...
  - bllguo 6y ago
    That seems a bit disingenuous. While I am no expert and cannot verify if the claims in your article are true (though Wikipedia asserts the same), it is clearly different from the OP. Your link is (presumably) rooted in accepted historical fact, while the OP is speculation
    - rangibaby 6y ago
      Skillful propaganda uses facts to make a conclusion or conjecture that is misleading. > Sushi is not from Japan Some people will stop reading and share it on Facebook here > Sushi reached China, then Japan from its origins along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, and was later exported to the US and the rest of the world Actually, it's from China! Now even more people will stop reading and share it on Facebook > The dish started out as fermented whole fish preserved with inedible salted rice Wait, that doesn't sound like sushi to me > However, the sushi we know today tastes and looks very different to how it did centuries ago. First of all, the rice in the original “sushi” was not intended to be eaten. Mixed with salt, it was used to preserve the fish and then thrown out. Three paragraphs in and below the fold, the article itself admits that the dish being discussed isn't sushi. We're talking about "sushi" here! > And sushi’s origins aren’t even Japanese, says Nobu Hong Kong executive sushi chef Kazunari Araki, who has more than 20 years of sushi-making experience. "origins". Also, it's a Japanese guy saying it. Even Japanese ADMIT sushi is not Japanese! > The combination of rice and fish, he explains, originated in the third century along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, where countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are now situated. 1,700 years ago people preserved fish in rice! > By the 12th century, this method of fermenting fish had travelled from the Mekong to China, and then on to Japan, where it was called narezushi. However, in the 16th century, in the Edo period, Araki says, vinegar replaced salt in the preservation process, which was a major step forward in the development of sushi. It also gave birth to the name sushi – which translates to “vinegared rice”. I'm pretty sure this means the dish that we call sushi now is Japanese. Do you think most people will have read this far down into the article? The rest of the article is about how sushi is actually American. According to this article, sushi is from South East Asia, Chinese, and America! Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion to you?
tempo54321 6y ago
I want to point out that "mam" does not mean sauce. Nouc means water and is applied to water-type liquids, including fish sauce. Mam means salted fish. It's salted fish water. Mam does not mean sauce.
- NhanH 6y ago
  To be truly pedantic, "mam" means more "salted thing" than "salted fish". There are "mắm nhum" or squid mam that has nothing to do with fish. And it is overloaded in any case. Asking for "mam" to go with your main dish means asking for a mam-based sauce. Mam does mean sauce, frequently.
  - JCharante 6y ago
    For sauce though you'd probably say "nước chấm", of which "nước mắm" is a subset of. All mắms are chấms but not all chấms are mắms.
INTPenis 6y ago
And really as far as I could tell only the title lead people to believe otherwise. The first statement from an actual researcher says the jury is out. So it's pretty honest, clickbait has unfortunately become part of the internet.
rurban 6y ago
That's interesting, because from the outside Chinese cooking seems to be barbaric compared to Vietnamese cooking. Chinese cooking styles varies more, but they often prefer barbaric techniques, like overcooking, over saucing, using stark with lots of sugar, soy over fish sauce, ... even in terms of their own style. Best cooking is definitely from Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.
- contingencies 6y ago
  As someone who has spent the last 20 years in the region, I can tell you that there is awesome Chinese food, it's just hard to find outside of China and tends to be heavily regional. I share your affinity for Thai and Vietnamese flavour profiles and their emphasis on freshness, though - actually just made bun bo hue for dinner!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
himinlomax 6y ago
> Fish sauce is very simple I'm not so sure. Rotten fish is extremely gross. The notion that it's not when fermented in salt is not entirely obvious. Having said that, it is definitely obvious as a byproduct of fish preservation. If people start producing dried salted fish, someone is bound to notice that the juice is actually tasty. I wonder how commonly available sea salt was in East Asia compared to the Mediterranean. It is saltier and has a much drier climate and thus producing lots of salt is easier.
- pampa 6y ago
  So is smelly or mouldy french cheese. I think a lot of fermented products are basically preservation techniques gone sideways. Smells funny, looks funny but doesn't make you sick when you eat it, you don't just throw food away when it is scarce. And after some time you develop a taste for it.
  - dan_hawkins 6y ago
    > I think a lot of fermented products are basically preservation techniques gone sideways. My theory also :) Given historical harsh winters in Europe you're gonna eat whatever there is in the middle of a winter, spoiled or not. Turned out some of that spoiled stuff is quite good.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I'm not so sure. Rotten fish is extremely gross. The notion that it's not when fermented in salt is not entirely obvious. It is easily discoverable, since people used salt to preserve fish (and other food) all the time in those times...
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    You should've read my next sentence.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
chithanh 6y ago
> If there's any link between Vietnam and Rome, we'd have found traces of them along the Silk Road or maritime routes. Actually, ancient Greek and Roman artifacts have been discovered at Óc Eo in the Mekong Delta.
deleted 6y ago
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vanusa 6y ago
I'd make the case that fish sauces were independently developed by different cultures. You can but you'd be... making a wild guess basically. Fish sauce is very simple. You only need two ingredients: fish and salt. And most likely... skimming the rest of the article, which does not claim that the Asian societies would not have invented the "some version of fish sauce" on their own. What the article bases its case on is the invention of a specific kind of fish sauce: Acclaimed chef Peter Cuong Franklin, owner of Anan Restaurant and Nhau Nhau Bar in Ho Chi Minh City, believes nuoc mam “may trace its origin back to garum” given that the Vietnamese version is also made by interleaving layers of anchovies with sea salt and letting it ferment in wood or ceramic containers for about 12 months. It's the specificity of the invention which leads merit to the idea -- along with linguistic cues -- that it may have been imported (or perhaps hybridized with an imported invention). Not a proven case of course - but worth taking seriously.

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 :(

wyuenho 6y ago
It has already been neutered since Jack Ma bought it a couple years ago. Have you read their editorials lately?
rangibaby 6y ago
Acting like an opposing nation copied (STOLE) something important to its cultural identity is a classic nationalist talking point. Here is the exact same article with Vietnam and fish sauce cut and pasted for Japan and sushi! https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3016361/sushi-not-japan-how-raw-fish-and-rice-became-world-favourite https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3016361/su...
- bllguo 6y ago
  That seems a bit disingenuous. While I am no expert and cannot verify if the claims in your article are true (though Wikipedia asserts the same), it is clearly different from the OP. Your link is (presumably) rooted in accepted historical fact, while the OP is speculation
  - rangibaby 6y ago
    Skillful propaganda uses facts to make a conclusion or conjecture that is misleading. > Sushi is not from Japan Some people will stop reading and share it on Facebook here > Sushi reached China, then Japan from its origins along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, and was later exported to the US and the rest of the world Actually, it's from China! Now even more people will stop reading and share it on Facebook > The dish started out as fermented whole fish preserved with inedible salted rice Wait, that doesn't sound like sushi to me > However, the sushi we know today tastes and looks very different to how it did centuries ago. First of all, the rice in the original “sushi” was not intended to be eaten. Mixed with salt, it was used to preserve the fish and then thrown out. Three paragraphs in and below the fold, the article itself admits that the dish being discussed isn't sushi. We're talking about "sushi" here! > And sushi’s origins aren’t even Japanese, says Nobu Hong Kong executive sushi chef Kazunari Araki, who has more than 20 years of sushi-making experience. "origins". Also, it's a Japanese guy saying it. Even Japanese ADMIT sushi is not Japanese! > The combination of rice and fish, he explains, originated in the third century along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia, where countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are now situated. 1,700 years ago people preserved fish in rice! > By the 12th century, this method of fermenting fish had travelled from the Mekong to China, and then on to Japan, where it was called narezushi. However, in the 16th century, in the Edo period, Araki says, vinegar replaced salt in the preservation process, which was a major step forward in the development of sushi. It also gave birth to the name sushi – which translates to “vinegared rice”. I'm pretty sure this means the dish that we call sushi now is Japanese. Do you think most people will have read this far down into the article? The rest of the article is about how sushi is actually American. According to this article, sushi is from South East Asia, Chinese, and America! Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion to you?

tempo54321 6y ago

I want to point out that "mam" does not mean sauce. Nouc means water and is applied to water-type liquids, including fish sauce. Mam means salted fish. It's salted fish water. Mam does not mean sauce.

NhanH 6y ago
To be truly pedantic, "mam" means more "salted thing" than "salted fish". There are "mắm nhum" or squid mam that has nothing to do with fish. And it is overloaded in any case. Asking for "mam" to go with your main dish means asking for a mam-based sauce. Mam does mean sauce, frequently.
- JCharante 6y ago
  For sauce though you'd probably say "nước chấm", of which "nước mắm" is a subset of. All mắms are chấms but not all chấms are mắms.

INTPenis 6y ago

And really as far as I could tell only the title lead people to believe otherwise. The first statement from an actual researcher says the jury is out. So it's pretty honest, clickbait has unfortunately become part of the internet.

rurban 6y ago

That's interesting, because from the outside Chinese cooking seems to be barbaric compared to Vietnamese cooking. Chinese cooking styles varies more, but they often prefer barbaric techniques, like overcooking, over saucing, using stark with lots of sugar, soy over fish sauce, ... even in terms of their own style. Best cooking is definitely from Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

contingencies 6y ago
As someone who has spent the last 20 years in the region, I can tell you that there is awesome Chinese food, it's just hard to find outside of China and tends to be heavily regional. I share your affinity for Thai and Vietnamese flavour profiles and their emphasis on freshness, though - actually just made bun bo hue for dinner!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

himinlomax 6y ago

> Fish sauce is very simple I'm not so sure. Rotten fish is extremely gross. The notion that it's not when fermented in salt is not entirely obvious. Having said that, it is definitely obvious as a byproduct of fish preservation. If people start producing dried salted fish, someone is bound to notice that the juice is actually tasty. I wonder how commonly available sea salt was in East Asia compared to the Mediterranean. It is saltier and has a much drier climate and thus producing lots of salt is easier.

pampa 6y ago
So is smelly or mouldy french cheese. I think a lot of fermented products are basically preservation techniques gone sideways. Smells funny, looks funny but doesn't make you sick when you eat it, you don't just throw food away when it is scarce. And after some time you develop a taste for it.
- dan_hawkins 6y ago
  > I think a lot of fermented products are basically preservation techniques gone sideways. My theory also :) Given historical harsh winters in Europe you're gonna eat whatever there is in the middle of a winter, spoiled or not. Turned out some of that spoiled stuff is quite good.
coldtea 6y ago
>I'm not so sure. Rotten fish is extremely gross. The notion that it's not when fermented in salt is not entirely obvious. It is easily discoverable, since people used salt to preserve fish (and other food) all the time in those times...
- himinlomax 6y ago
  You should've read my next sentence.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

chithanh 6y ago

> If there's any link between Vietnam and Rome, we'd have found traces of them along the Silk Road or maritime routes. Actually, ancient Greek and Roman artifacts have been discovered at Óc Eo in the Mekong Delta.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vanusa 6y ago

I'd make the case that fish sauces were independently developed by different cultures. You can but you'd be... making a wild guess basically. Fish sauce is very simple. You only need two ingredients: fish and salt. And most likely... skimming the rest of the article, which does not claim that the Asian societies would not have invented the "some version of fish sauce" on their own. What the article bases its case on is the invention of a specific kind of fish sauce: Acclaimed chef Peter Cuong Franklin, owner of Anan Restaurant and Nhau Nhau Bar in Ho Chi Minh City, believes nuoc mam “may trace its origin back to garum” given that the Vietnamese version is also made by interleaving layers of anchovies with sea salt and letting it ferment in wood or ceramic containers for about 12 months. It's the specificity of the invention which leads merit to the idea -- along with linguistic cues -- that it may have been imported (or perhaps hybridized with an imported invention). Not a proven case of course - but worth taking seriously.