I got into trouble this week from my wife. I had to undertake some maintenance errands as well as provisioning for and cooking dinner. Short of time I took a photo of the evening’s selected recipe and went shopping. In receiving “feedback”, I was informed that the pantry was already brimming with bottles of Nam Pla, the Thai fish sauce, that I only needed one tablespoon of. This umami tsunami kicked off this blog on one of my pet topics.
Umami
Until the early 20th century, Western cooks worked with four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Until a Japanese scientist identified a fifth taste based on the savouriness of seaweed broth. He called it “umami”—from “umai” (delicious) and “mi” (taste).
The umami flavour was eventually linked to glutamates that occur in meats, cheeses, mushrooms, tomatoes—and, particularly, in fermented fish sauces.
Because umami is a Japanese word, the taste it describes is most closely associated with Asian foods. But it also has been part of Western cooking for millenia. In modern times it seems to have been disguised behind names that don’t expose the key ingredient.
Asian umami sauces
Asian fermented fish sauces are easy to identify from their names. Thai fish sauce, nam pla, literally means “fish water.” Vietnamese nước mắm, means the same. The Chinese version, yúlù is a bit more poetic but still very literal in meaning “fish dew”. These are all sauces made by fermenting anchovies or other small fish in salt.
Western umami
The Ancient Greeks had garos and the Romans had garum early fish sauces made from fermented fish scraps (the name is thought to come from a type of fish).
Scandinavia doesn’t produce fish sauces, but it has a strong tradition of eating fermented fish. The Swedish surströmming—literally “sour herring”—is Baltic herring fermented in brine. Iceland’s hákarl, fermented Greenland shark—possibly from Old Norse roots meaning “high man” or simply “shark”. In Norway, rakfisk means “soaked fish” and refers to salted trout fermented and eaten uncooked.
The English tradition
I had an English upbringing. Although the English have a reputation for bland food they do have some great sauces. It seems out of sensitivity to the source of the flavour (i.e. from fermented fish) the English equivalent sauces bear names that give no clue to the key ingredient.
Worcestershire sauce is the best-known example. It is made from fermented anchovies, tamarind, vinegar, garlic. Brown sauce (HP Sauce is the famous brand name) used anchovy essence. Gentleman’s Relish is a salty anchovy paste sold since 1828, sometimes under the dog Latin brand Patum Peperium.
The mystery of the hidden anchovy
It does seem that the English would go to any length to disguise that they are eating anchovies or fermented fish while Asian countries are quite proud of their varieties. I wonder if this is a mystery to solve—with no red herrings but invisible anchovies.