They most often eat it with a bad ragout of fish, pungent beans, and a water of very salt fish, which they call nuoc mam.
1872: M. Maurel, "A Scientific Mission to Cambodia", The Popular Science Monthly, vol. 30, p. 316 [2]
But it is a different affair when we come to a product which the Cambodian likes well enough to set everywhere—the nuoc-man, or oil of fermented fish. The Annamites use this, too, but they refine it.
1879: Peter Lund Simmonds, The Commercial Products of the Sea; or, marine contributions to food, industry, and art, p. 265 [3]
Nuoc-mam is an article of great necessity to the Annamites, who live in the midst of marshes, where the water is bad, and who neither drink wine nor spirits.
1885:James George Scott, France and Tongking: a narrative of the campaign of 1884 and the occupation of Further India, p. 317 [4]
There is a shed in the middle, where the Annamese are established, and sell provisions of all sorts—meat fresh, dubious, and dried; fish in every state, from those that still have a flick left in the tail to Nuöc-mam, a noisome liquor strained off the captures of many months since; fruit, eggs, vegetables, and all the mysterious roots and dried leaves and fibres that the Cochin Chinaman loves.
1904: Lionel W. Lyde, A Geography of Asia Including the East Indies (2nd ed.), p. 72 [5]
Shrimp-paste, or “Nuoc-mam,” is a favourite food, and is even used as a medicine.
1927: "Weird Food for Gourmets; Paris Scientists Test With Relish the New Gastronomic Discoveries of the Year", The New York Times, p. SM18 [6]
The sauce may be of any kind that the consumer finds agreeable, though the sponsor of “inter-sauces” has derived the best results from sho-yu, the juice of the Soja bean, and from nuoc-mam, the juice of a salted fish prepared by the Annamites.
1935: Marcelle "Countess" Morphy, Recipes of All Nations, p. 802 [7]
PHO is the name of an Annamese soup held in high esteem. It is made with beef, a veal bone, onions, a bayleaf, salt, and pepper, and a small teaspoon of nuoc-man,[sic] a typically Annamese condiment which is used in practically all their dishes. It is made from a kind of brine exuding from decaying fish, and in former days six years were required before it had reached full maturity. But in modern times the preparation has been put on the market, and can be made by chemical processes in a very short time.
The Nuoc-nhuts and Nuoc-mams made by the dissolution of fish meat to a certain degree of disintegration, are transparent solutions without appreciable sediment, with sui generis odor and flavor, sufficiently salted not to offer any sign of putrefaction.
1995: Keith Steinkraus, Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods (2nd ed.), p. 597 [9]
After maturing, the first liquid collected through the tap is first-quality nuoc-mam or nuoc-nhut.
