Interesting-how are you going to contain the smell of curing/drying and fermentation-if you live in a city/burb? If you live in the boonies every bear for miles will be attracted by it, too...
Being country-bred and of Hispanic ancestry, there are very few food items I won’t eat-I’m fond of grilled rattlesnake, fried mountain oysters, barbacoa and huevos con sesos for breakfast...
But at the top of my gag-me food list is fish sauce-both my 1st hubby and MrT5 developed a taste for it while in the military-MrT5 was especially fond of the Thai fish sauce from the local Oriental grocery, and was amused every time I’d eat at the breakfast island when he’d bring a bottle of it to the table to put on his food-the smell of that Thai stuff could gag a hungry bear, so I can just imagine how Roman Garum reeked...
My guy moved to the city long before we got together and he forgot smells we don’t mind out here in BFE-from the smell of livestock to the aroma of cooking certain Hispanic foods-he does not come out to my place if I’m going to be cooking menudo, which I love-if I served him fish sauce, I’d probably be arrested for murder by poison...
I’m out here in the mushroom capital of the world, maybe a nice fragrant fish sauce could improve the local olfactory experience.
Thai fish sauce is my soy. There’s a few variants that I never learned the names so I labeled them by smell; “feet sauce”, “@ss sauce” .
As a kid, I never considered anything “we” ate odd, pungent or ethnic for that matter. It was food and you’ll eat it or it’ll be waiting for you at breakfast.
I eat a lot of Mexican, some Cuban & PR too and haven’t found anything that I didn’t want seconds. “Hispanic” foods, if not done with dairy, tend to agree with me. Menudo sounds like pepper pot, I’d eat it - bring on the fish sauce!