fermented fish products, and Europeans a
handful. These include the original sushi,
which was not a pristinely fresh piece of fish
on mildly vinegared rice! Here I’ll describe
some of the more common ones.
Asian Fish Pastes and Sauces Asian
fermented fish pastes and sauces are vital
manifestations of a preparation that has
mostly disappeared in Europe but was once
well known as garum or liquamen, the fish
sauce of Rome (see box, p. 235). (Modern
ketchup, a sweet-sour tomato condiment,
owes its name to kecap, an Indonesian salty
fish condiment.) Fish sauces play the same
role that soy sauces do in regions where soy
doesn’t grow well, and were probably the
original model for soy sauce.
Fish pastes and sauces are two phases of
the same simple preparation. A mass of fish
or shellfish is mixed with salt to give an
overall salt concentration between 10% and