Gluten-free "gluten"

[Retrograde]

You learn something new every day. We went out for dinner with friends at a Shanghaiese restaurant, and, all of us being adventurous diners, decided to order things we hadn't encountered before. One of them was listed as "fish gluten" After a chorus of "but fish don't have gluten", we got it. Turned out to be a fish paste/egg mixture with a sauce, very tasty - and totally gluten free! You learn something new every day.

[sir pball]

1. Asian cuisine defines "gluten/glutinous" differently.

Usually it's meant in the original sense of sticky, glue-like…prime example being glutinous rice, which of course is gluten-free. "Gluten" itself is Latin for "glue" and evolved to mean any sticky substance; the grain-based protein was named as such because it's the glue that holds breads together.

So in your case, it meant a goopy substance made of fish, not a fish-derived protein!

ETA: Just to make things more confusing, in Asian cookery "mock" meats and seitan are pure gluten that's been processed and seasoned to serve as non-animal protein substitutes! So an unwary consumer could think they're avoiding gluten by passing on the Fish Gluten in favor of the Mock Duck…