alt Hacker NewsJust out of curiosity, would dumping a ton of bleach into the mixture get rid of the smell by breaking apart all of the components? Or maybe high concentration acid?
Replies
philipkglass • today at 4:39 PM
Yes, bleach could destroy the complex odoriferous compounds in fish sauce. Ordinary chlorine bleach in liquid form is so dilute that you wouldn't be able to run the process in-place in the original fish sauce storage tanks, though. There are more concentrated forms like granular calcium hypochlorite that would take up less volume, but the heat generated by oxidizing organic matter on this scale makes it a sort of chemical engineering problem.
samus • today at 4:40 PM
Acid is a good way to modulate the flavor. There is a reason why in Vietnamese dishes are often served with limes.
Rehashing another of my comments: The smell is caused by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimethylamine
From a random google search I got this report https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/18877/TFG-I-468... (mostly in Spanish, with an English abstract). It looks serious and as far as I understand it makes sense.
One of the solutions in the report is to add iodine, so I guess bleach would work too. But I also guess the final product is more dangerous and may release other nasty fumes. Don't try it at home.
I think acid can prevent the smell to escape to the air, but I guess you need a high concentration to destroy it, perhaps add heat to make the destruction faster. Anyway, you have to neutralize the acid before releasing the leftovers, and the boiling acid nasty goo sounds dangerous. Don't try it at home.