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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.




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


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.


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.


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.


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.


I have a Pad Thai recipe that calls for both fish sauce and tamarind paste. Do you think there's some connection?




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