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Comment by setBoolean | Hacker News Reader

Fish sauce really is a gift of the gods and it saddens me that this pinnacle of flavour is nearly lost in the western world.

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People see fish sauce and are shocked but Worcestershire sauce is a fish sauce.

Worcestershire sauce is delicious too but to be fair there are a lot of variants that omit the fish part.

Lea and Perrins definitely used fermented fish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WSiQAVzT1c

I had to look up the ingredients[1]: Anchovies, Tamarind paste and Beer among others.

[1]https://www.thespruceeats.com/homemade-worcestershire-sauce-...

Sure, in the sense that Caesar dressing is a fish sauce. The parts of Worcestershire sauce that you can taste are the vinegar and sugar.

Well you could always crack open a can of anchovies to augment the sauce. It's not as though anchovies are lost to time.

Not yet anyway...

Maybe I'm just too "in it" from having eaten Thai fish-sauce almost every day for many many years, but I'm not convinced that fish sauce tastes of fish any more than soy sauce tastes of soy or red wine vinegar tastes of red wine. It tastes of salt and umami and ... tastes like fish sauce.

I think you’re “in it”. I had a partner that loved fish sauce and insisted it didn’t taste “fishy”, but to me, who didn’t grow up with it and generally dislikes “fish” taste, it tastes extremely fishy.

IMO, fish sauce (and I'm picturing the red boat one my wife buys) is like manna from heaven when there's just a hint of it. Too much, and it starts to taste a little...poopy.

I use fish sauce in small amounts to make fried rice. (Also present, in large amounts: oil, soy sauce, garlic.)

It has no flavor that I can particularly detect at the end of the process. The smell when you open the bottle is overwhelming, and terrible. I wouldn't venture to sample it directly.

I’ve started making Caesar dressing from scratch when I want it, and the anchovies can really shine when you do it yourself.

Personally, I'm holding out until scientists finally isolate the ingredients of Bestchestershire sauce.

On the flipside, I’m an otherwise adventurous eater but I simply can’t stand the taste of fish sauce.

It’s why I now mostly avoid Thai food as a whole, the fish sauce is nauseating and overpowering.

It is still used in Italian cuisine - colatura di alici.

Southern US recipes add it to a lot of stuff.

I see it used in recipes in the west often.

I'm making a pork recipe tomorrow that uses it.

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