Information about the Informant

My informant is from a Vietnamese family. She’s currently an undergraduate student at Indiana University Bloomington. In her spare time, she loves to knit and cook, primarily baked goods, but also some “Asian” recipes that she learned from her family. This is a recipe for a Vietnamese fish sauce that her mother taught her and which she has memorized, that she recited for me while I was visiting her with another high school friend of ours.

Transcript

“For the uh, mixed-out fish sauce. I don’t know what it’s called in English. Anyways, it is one part fish sauce, two parts warm water, two parts sugar, and two parts vinegar or mixture of vinegar and lime juice or something. Vinegar doesn’t taste as good, but it doesn’t go bad as quickly. Optional sliced ginger and optional chili garlic sauce.”

Analysis

My informant, as stated above, enjoys cooking with her mother, and, as her family is Vietnamese, this is a recipe that may have been passed down through her family. One questionable (questionable as in whether or not this recipe is “authentic”) item is the chili garlic sauce. While undoubtedly, Vietnam could have encountered the chili plant (which originated in the Americas but quickly spread around the globe after Columbus’s voyage) centuries ago, when discussing the question of whether or not a dish is authentically ethnic, people are usually uncomfortable with the idea that an ingredient was imported into the country that the dish supposedly originated in. It is mitigated here by her stating that the chili garlic sauce is optional, but does raise an interesting question (as ethnic food recipes often do) of what do we call authentic and how do we define authenticity?