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1 1. What is Thai Cuisine? An Introduction There is a degree of ambiguity attached to the understanding of Thai cuisine. Having lived half of my life outside of Thailand, it seems that food became Thai only in foreign settings, whereas Thai food in Thailand is rarely identified in such fashion. There must be, to borrow Roland Barthes’ terminology, ‘a system of communication’, 1 and an established body of knowledge that enables Thais and foreigners alike to identify what food is and is not Thai. The making of this body of knowledge and its system of communication shall be explored in this thesis. In the popular understanding and representation, ‘Thai’ cuisine today can be divided into seven subsidiary variations. Six of these are distinguishable regional variations: Northern or Lanna, North-eastern or Isan, Eastern, Southern, Central Plain, and Bangkok. The seventh variation is the royal cuisine. A singular ‘Thai’ cuisine, as marketed throughout the world today, represents an encompassing culinary landscape that includes dishes from all of these subsidiary culinary cultures. The problem is not unlike the perception of an ‘Indian’ cuisine discussed by Arjun Appadurai, who argues that a singular ‘Indian’ cuisine materialized, and continues to do so, through the representation and articulation of varieties of culinary forms, a cultural process influenced by what he calls ‘the seductiveness of variety’. 2 The invention of an ‘Indian’ cuisine, as argued by Appadurai, belongs to the larger cultural process of constructing a complex national public culture, spearheaded by the 1 Roland Barthes, ‘Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’, in Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 5, edited by Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, Baltimore: Johns Hopkis University Press, 1979, p.168. 2 Arjun Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies of Society and History, 30:1 (1988), p.10.

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1. What is Thai Cuisine? An Introduction

There is a degree of ambiguity attached to the understanding of Thai cuisine. Having

lived half of my life outside of Thailand, it seems that food became Thai only in

foreign settings, whereas Thai food in Thailand is rarely identified in such fashion.

There must be, to borrow Roland Barthes’ terminology, ‘a system of

communication’,1 and an established body of knowledge that enables Thais and

foreigners alike to identify what food is and is not Thai. The making of this body of

knowledge and its system of communication shall be explored in this thesis.

In the popular understanding and representation, ‘Thai’ cuisine today can be divided

into seven subsidiary variations. Six of these are distinguishable regional variations:

Northern or Lanna, North-eastern or Isan, Eastern, Southern, Central Plain, and

Bangkok. The seventh variation is the royal cuisine. A singular ‘Thai’ cuisine, as

marketed throughout the world today, represents an encompassing culinary landscape

that includes dishes from all of these subsidiary culinary cultures.

The problem is not unlike the perception of an ‘Indian’ cuisine discussed by Arjun

Appadurai, who argues that a singular ‘Indian’ cuisine materialized, and continues to

do so, through the representation and articulation of varieties of culinary forms, a

cultural process influenced by what he calls ‘the seductiveness of variety’.2 The

invention of an ‘Indian’ cuisine, as argued by Appadurai, belongs to the larger

cultural process of constructing a complex national public culture, spearheaded by the

1 Roland Barthes, ‘Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’, in Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 5, edited by Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, Baltimore: Johns Hopkis University Press, 1979, p.168. 2 Arjun Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies of Society and History, 30:1 (1988), p.10.

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urban middle class in accordance to the spirit of nationalism, and also fueled by the

new socio-economic dynamic of the post-colonial era.3

In the case of ‘Thai’ cuisine, the formulation of the culinary form came about in a

landscape dominated by the culture of the Central Thais, and led by their aristocratic

elites.4 Two factors played an important part in this formulation: first, the social

dynamic of Thai settlement; and secondly, the emergence of Bangkok as the political

and cultural center of Siam following the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767. But before

proceeding, scholarly approaches in understanding cuisine need to be explored.

1.1 Anthropological Approaches to Food

Food scholars have evaded the ambiguity of ‘cuisine’ by concentrating on the larger

process of food production, often referred to as the ‘food system’. This system

consists of ‘complex interdependent interrelationships associated with the production

and distribution of food’ that can be divided into five different phases: growing or

farming, distribution and storing of ingredients, cooking or preparing, eating and

consumption, and disposing of leftovers.5 This concept of the ‘food system’ is

utilized by scholars from a variety of academic fields, but its initial usage was mainly

by anthropologists. The cultural meaning of ‘cuisine’ is dealt with by two different

anthropological approaches: the first concentrates on the cultural meanings of food

from its preparation and production, while the second focuses on its consumption and

consumer’s demand.

3 Ibid. 4 Maurizio Peleggi, Thailand: The Worldly Kingdom, London: Reaktion Books, 2007, p.47. 5 Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil, Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society, London: Routledge, 1997, p.32-33.

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The first approach, inspired largely by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Mary Douglas,

reduces the process of food production, preparation, and presentation to a system of

syntagmatic relations, or linguistic structure.6 This method approaches food from the

way a meal is produced, prepared, and cooked. It does this by treating food as

‘encrypted codes’ so that the social components of dishes need to be ‘decoded’ to

reveal ‘pattern of social relations’ such as ‘hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion,

boundaries and transactions across the boundaries’ within the food system.7 As

Douglas herself remarks, this approach requires a ‘close understanding of a

microscale social system’,8 meaning that the analysis unravels the social component

of dishes at a certain place and time.

The weakness of this approach in analyzing the making of a ‘cuisine’ is that it only

offers a static social picture existing in a static timeframe. It usefully explains the

need to unravel the various culinary codes that exist within the repertoire of a meal to

understand the social dynamic behind the concoction of a cuisine. However, the

process of attaching a certain socio-cultural identity to ‘cuisine’ is left unanswered.

This approach may explain, for example, how a certain dish like kaeng matsaman, or

‘the curry of the Muslim’ (the Thai word matsaman being derived from Persian and

Arabic word musliman or ‘Muslim’), came to Siam via Muslim traders in the

seventeenth century Persian-Siamese trade.9 Nevertheless, this does not explain the

historical process of how matsaman became a dish in ‘Thai’ cuisine. The framework

of a ‘microscale social system’ also leaves little room for understanding the creative

dimension of cooking itself. 6 Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘The Culinary Triangle’, in., Food and Culture, A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 28-35; Mary Douglas, ‘Deciphering a Meal’, Daedalus, 101:1, 1972, pp.61-81. 7 Mary Douglas, ‘Deciphering a Meal’, p61. 8 Ibid. 9 Sombat Plainoi, Kraya Niyai (Eatery stories), Bangkok: Matichon, 1998, p.44.

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Treating each culinary code as either the ‘lexicon’ or ‘grammar’ of a meal does not

explain why new cooking techniques are incorporated into the preparation of an old

dish, or why ingredients are added overtime, or in some cases, why old ingredients are

left out. It also does not explain the existence of many variations of a dish. Going

back to the example of matsaman, approaching the meal as a rigid linguistic code

does not sufficiently explain why modern matsaman is oily and highly seasoned with

tamarind and sugar, as opposed to the Ayutthayan version that required only dried

spices, onions, and ginger.10 In short, this approach relies too much on the particular

concept of a dish in unlocking its culinary code. Food, after all, is very different from

language. As Mintz points out, ‘we can eat without meals, but we cannot speak

without grammar’.11 The cultural importance of linguistic structure, from its usage to

its grammar, is very different from the reliance of food dishes on styles of dining.

The second anthropological approach led by scholars such as Jean-François Revel,

Jack Goody, Michael Freeman, Arjun Appadurai, and Sidney Mintz is largely

influenced by the work of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu.12 Still viewing

‘cuisine’ as part of the larger ‘food system’, these scholars approach the system by

dissecting culinary codes through consumption and demand in order to identify food’s

relationship with the wider social and cultural structure. They do this largely by using

social class as a tool of analysis. It was Freeman, in his analysis of the Chinese

10 The differentiation between modern and Ayutthaya’s recipe of the matsaman has been suggested by the Australian chef David Thompson. See David Thompson, Thai Food, London: Viking, 2002, p.329. 11 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, New York: Penguin, 1986, p.200. 12 Jean-François Revel, Culture and Cuisine: a Journey Through the History of Food, New York: Double Day, 1982; Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1982; Michael Freeman, ‘Sung’, Food in Chinese Culture, edited by Kwang Chih Chang, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1977; Arjun Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India’; Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

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culinary landscape during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD), who first pointed out that

‘cuisine’ is related to the particular system of producing and distributing food.13 This

system includes: availability of ingredients derived from both farmland and trade, and

a society daring to indulge in food consumption and be experimental in food

preparation.

Goody adopted Freeman’s approach and expanded it by identifying internal social

dynamics of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culinary traits within a society’s gastronomic culture.

He argues that it is important to view food, from its production to its preparation and

consumption, as comparative to social structure. This comparison between food and

society is distinguishable in terms of social hierarchy.14 Goody’s identification of the

‘high’ and ‘low’ culinary subsystem is echoed by Revel, who argues that ‘any

cooking, in any country and in any tradition, has two sources’,15 one ‘popular’, and

another ‘erudite’.16

‘Popular cuisine’ is based on nature: ingredients deriving from the soil, determined by

geographical region and seasonal changes; and meals prepared by age-old cooking

methods, passed down from generation to generation. ‘Erudite cuisine’ is based on

invention, renewal, and experimentation. As Revels puts it, ‘in the course of history

there has been a peasant cuisine and a court cuisine; a plebeian cuisine and a family

cuisine prepared by the mother; and a cuisine of professionals that only chefs

fanatically devoted to their art have the time and the knowledge to practice.’17

13 Freeman, ‘Sung’, p.44. 14 Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class, p.2. 15 Jean-François Revel, in the preface of Alain Ducasse, Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse’s Culinary Encyclopedia, New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2005. 16 Revel, ‘Retrieving Tastes: Two Sources of Cuisine’, in The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink, p.53. 17 Ibid.

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These two definitions, of ‘popular’ and ‘erudite’, offer a model adopted by others who

have looked at ‘cuisine’ in various contexts. Mintz articulates this dichotomy by

arguing that there is no ‘cuisine’ other than the ‘popular’ one. For him, ‘cuisine’ has

to do with the ongoing food system of a region ‘within which active discourse about

food sustains both common understanding and reliable production’ of that particular

culinary code.18 The ‘erudite’ cultural demarcation is simply a representation of more

than one regional culinary code and its articulation can even be considered

‘imagined’, basing itself on the larger cultural and socio-political dynamic of a

particular time.19

The dichotomization between ‘high’ and ‘low’ can be utilized in a social context by

consulting Bourdieu’s work. In reference to food consumption, Bourdieu defines the

‘taste of luxury’ as ‘taste of individuals who are the products of material conditions of

existence defined by distance from necessity, by the freedoms or facilities stemming

from possession of capital’, whereas ‘taste of necessity’ is largely defined by

individuals’ adjustment to their economic condition.20 This view is shared by Roland

Barthes in his analysis of food recipes in French popular magazines. He points out

that the ‘bourgeois’ inclined magazines provide elaborate recipes that use a variety of

ingredients, both for consumption as well as garnishing, whereas magazines with a

largely working class audience import more practical, and straightforward food

recipes.21 In short, the cultural choice of food consumption that is manifested in the

cultural identification of a culinary code is based upon social differentiation within a

18 Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996, p.104. 19 Ibid., p. 96; Christine M. du Bois and Sidney W. Mintz, ‘The Anthropology of Food and Eating’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 2002, p.109. 20 Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. p. 177. 21 Barthes, ‘Ornamental Cookery’, in Mythologies, London: J. Cape, 1972, p. 85-87.

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society. But how does this dichotomization work in a specific historical context?

Historical work on food shall now be examined.

1.2 Historical Approaches to Food

French Historians from the Annales School were the first to look at food from various

perspectives. Inspired by Fernand Braudel’s idea of different temporalities of

historical time: the longue durée or the near-constant duration determined by

ecological changes; the conjoncture (conjuncture) or what he called ‘history of gentle

rhythms of groups and grouping’, brought about by factors like consistent economic

interactions; and the histoire événementielle or short-term sequences shaped by

human agency.22

The work of Jean-Jacques Hémardinquer, for example, traces the role of the family

pig and the consumption of pork meat from the sixteenth to nineteenth-century

France.23 Using statistical records like pork meat prices, rates of population growth

and rates of deforestation, Hémardinquer demonstrates how pork meat, the grub of

medieval peasantry, became the food of the nobles and the bourgeoisie by the early

modern period. The time frame of Hémardinquer’s historical enquiry reflected a

mixture of two Braudelian temporalities: the longue durée in terms of the change that

took place in the ecological system which shifted the agricultural pattern; the

conjuncture in terms of shift in meat prices and consumption patterns of different

social classes.

22 Fernand Braudel, On History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980, p.3-4, 13-14, 39-41. 23 Jean-Jacques Hémardinquer, ‘The Family Pig of the Ancient Régime: Myth or Fact? in Food and Drink in History, p. 50 – 72.

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Other French scholars influenced by the Annales School were less interested in the

shifting consumption pattern of food. Rather, they were more interested in extracting

the socio-cultural worldview (mentalités) associated with food culture from culinary

texts and food-related literature. For example, Jean-Claude Bonnet looked at the

eighteenth-century French worldview on the discourse of diet, fasting, and hunger

from Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie.24 In a similar fashion, Jean Leclant used

diplomatic texts and trade statistics in analyzing the localization of coffee and the

creation of French café culture in the seventeenth-century.25

The French scholars were not the only ones who looked at the socio-cultural

worldview of food. English sociologist, Stephen Mennell, who looked at the place of

food in the social life of France and England, is an example.26 Mennell uses sources

like cookbooks and women’s magazines to sketch the development of French and

English gastronomie, the underlying attitude towards the enjoyment of food, from the

Middle Ages through to the present. On the usage of cookbooks and culinary texts as

a primary source, Mennell entered a debate with English food writer Elizabeth David

and the French scholar Alain Girard.27 Girard and David argue that there is generally

a time lag of several decades’ between actual cooking fashion and its textual culinary

representation. Mennell, on the other hand, argues that food writing, in the context of

his two case studies, represent the latest culinary fashion that is ahead of general

24 Jean-Claude Bonnet, ‘The Culinary System in the Encyclopédie’, in Food and Drink in History, p. 139-165. 25 Jean Leclant, ‘Coffee and Cafés in Paris, 1644-1693’, Food and Drink in History, p. 86-97. 26 Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1996. 27 Alain Girard, ‘Du manuscript a l’imprime: le livre de cuisine en Europe aux 15 et 16 siecles’, Pratiques et discours alimentaires a la Renaissance, edited by J.-C. Margolin and R. Sauzet, Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1982, p.107-117; Elizabeth David, French Country Cooking, London: John Lehmann,1955.

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practices.28 The utilization of the cookbook and culinary text as historical evidence

thus needs careful contextualization within the larger social, literary, and cultural

framework of the society in question.

Giovanni Rebora and Massimo Montanari also took a similar approach to Mennell in

looking at food culture in Italy and the Mediterranean world through consulting

sources like cookbooks and culinary literature.29 Rebora in particular was expansive

in his usage of sources in portraying the early modern gastronomic worldview of not

just Italy, but the Mediterranean world. The food culture, as he points out, respond to

major political happenings, changes in the territorial order of regimes, great

discoveries, the outcome of wars, the triumphs and defeats of countries, and to

international commercial agreements.30 Other scholars have similarly used a variety

of sources in looking at food in relation to the wider socio-cultural worldview. Emiko

Ohnuki-Tierney, for example, employs sources like religious texts, folklore, taxation

records, and statistics on seasonal patterns in her analysis of food and the formation of

a modern Japanese identity.31

The dialectical relationship between food and modern cultural identity is explored in

Appadurai’s work on the making of Indian national cuisine.32 Applying Goody’s idea

of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ to the context of post-colonial India, Appadurai looks how

modern Indian cookbooks helped creating a national cuisine from regional variations.

In his analogy between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ culinary code, Appadurai points out

28 Mennell, All Manners of Food, Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, p.65. 29 Giovanni Rebora, Culture of the Fork, A Brief History of Food in Europe, trans. Albert Sonnenfeld, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000; Massimo Montanari, Food is Culture, trans. Albert Sonnenfeld, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 30 Rebora, Culture of the Fork, p.xvi. 31 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self, Japanese Identities Through Time, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993. 32 Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine’, p.4.

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the typical dichotomy between court food and peasant food, as well as the distinction

between the diet of urban centers and rural peripheries. The ‘high cuisine’ in

preindustrial society, Appadurai argues, ‘drew upon regional, provincial and folk

materials and recipes’.33 This cultural phenomenon is attributed to the elite desire to

‘display their political power and commercial reach, and their cosmopolitan taste by

drawing in ingredients and techniques and even cooks from far and wide’.34 This

approach is adopted by Thai scholars who have attempted a conceptual formulation of

the Thai culinary code in the Thai cultural landscape.

1.3 Food in the Thai Context

Thai scholars have identified two social spaces in the Thai cultural landscape in which

the culinary code could be formulated: the town (muang) and the temple (wat), the

religious center of the community.35 Sombat Plainoi argues that the social spaces of

towns are the grounds for the concoction of cooking techniques, and a confluence of

raw ingredients collected from the countryside and acquired through trade.36

Adopting an outlook similar to Revel’s and Mintz’s, Sombat divides the Thai culinary

code in terms of chao muang, or townspeople, and chao chonnabot, or rural folks.37

Another social site that brings together a variety of culinary codes is ‘the temple’.

From providing daily alms to monks through merit making (tham bun) in religious

ritual and festivities, the social space centered around ‘the temple’ provides an

33 Ibid., p.4. 34 Ibid. 35 Sombat, Krua Thai (Thai kitchen), Bangkok, Ton-ao, 1994, p.66-67; Vespada, Yaowanuch ed., A-han: Sub lae Sin Pandin Thai (Thai cuisine: treasure and art of the land), Bangkok: Export-Import Bank of Thailand, 2001. 36 Sombat, Krua Thai, p.66-67. 37 Ibid.

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alternative site to the town in bringing together various culinary codes from the

countryside on a regular basis. The social spaces around the ‘temple’ provides a site

where there is an ongoing communication about food from the surrounding

community, arguably sufficient in shaping the culinary code of a region.

Thai scholars points to the Hit Sipsong Khong Sipsi, or ‘the twelve annual festivals

and fourteen social rituals’ observed by people in the Lao-Isan region, as a possible

social phenomenon that shaped the culinary code of Isan.38 The Hit Sipsong Khong

Sipie is a year-long series of Buddhist festivities where people in the community join

together in various merit-making occasions to pay their respect to their Buddhist faith,

as well as local spirits and deceased relatives. A large part of the merit making

involves the offering of specific delicacies, specifically designated for each occasion,

to the monks, the local spirits, and the deceased.

This example shows how the culinary code from the countryside came together in the

social space of the temple to shape a repertoire of dishes, distinctive for that particular

community, in this case the Lao-Isan region. Nevertheless, the culinary exchange

throughout the Hit Sipsong Khong Sipsi is very inflexible since the food associated

with merit makings for each month is allocated and specified. For example, a

delicacy known as khao pan is offered in March, khanom thian and khao tom mut is

offered during Songkran festivals in April.39 With social norms determining specific

delicacies for each month, there is little room for culinary inventiveness at ‘the

temple’. The social space of the muang, on the other hand, is more vibrant. The

social dynamic of the muang will now be examined.

38 It is believed that these religious rituals are influenced by the Lan Sang (or known in Thai as Lao-Lan Chang) culture. The ritual is also observed in some ethnic Khmer part of Isan. Vespada, Yaowanuch ed., A-han: Sub lae Sinpan Din Thai, p.40-41. 39 Ibid.

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Since at least the thirteenth century, concentrated Thai political settlements have been

called muang. Without clearly defined territorial boundaries, the muang is better

understood in Maurizio Peleggi’s words as ‘the spatial configuration of a hierarchical

relation of power; the rulers of smaller muang subjected themselves to the authority of

the overlord of larger muang by accepting tributary status.’40 The organization of

muang is done around the patriarch rulers (chao), who acted as ‘landlords’ both in

terms of managing the agrarian economy of the surrounding area through the control

of labor forces (phrai), as well as being responsible for organizing defense in times of

trouble.41

In the culinary realm, this distinction between the noble and ‘the rest’ was also

reflected in language. In the classification of rice, for example, the word khao chao,

(literally ‘rice of the noble’) was and is still used, to describe steamed rice, whereas

the word khao phrai, (rice of the plebs), was used to describe sticky rice.42 Thai

historian Suchit Wongthet speculates that this distinction between ‘rice of the noble’

and ‘rice of the plebs’ predates any known Thai kingdom, and can be traced back to

the ancient Mon culture of the Dvaravati period (c. sixth to tenth century AD),

situated in the delta of the Chaophraya River. The terminology came about because

scholars hypothesize that Dvaravati rulers imported foreign rice for their consumption

to distinguish themselves from their sticky-rice-eating subjects.43 The prominent Thai

writer and former Prime Minister, Kukrit Pramoj (1911-1995), explains that this rice

40 Peleggi, Thailand: Worldly Kingdom, p.58-59. 41 Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p.7-8. 42 In the present day the word khao niao, which literally mean sticky rice or glutinous, is used instead of khao phrai. See Suchit Wongthet, Khao Pla A-han Thai: Tummai? Majakhnai (Rice, fish, and Thai food: Why? And where did it come from.), Bangkok: KD Fund, 2008, p.71-77. For further also see Suchit Wongtet ed., Khao Phrai-Khao Chao Khong Chao Siam (Rice of patriarch-rice of plebs for the Siamese), Bangkok: Sinlapa Wattanatum, 1988. 43 Suchit, Khao Pla A-han Thai, p.75.

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dichotomy was formulated in the vernacular language deriving from the rural phrai’s

encounters with the chao’s diet in the urban social setting of the muang.44

Another important aspect that needs to be considered is that up until the middle of the

nineteenth century, the chao also controlled most of the trade that came to Siam from

the outside world. Many of these traders settled on Siamese shores. In seventeenth-

century Ayutthaya for example, there were settlements of ‘Chinese, Viet, Cham, Mon,

Portuguese, Arab, Indian, Persian, Japanese, and various Malay communities from the

archipelago.’45 Because of this cosmopolitan characteristic, the muang became a

confluence of ethnically diverse culinary forms. Throughout this thesis, the

anthropological term ‘foodway’ will be utilized in referring to the culinary sub-culture

of the non-Thai ethnic groups, while the term ‘culinary code’ will be used in referring

to food influence.46

The ethnic diversity of the Thai muang and the relationship between the chao and

foreign traders is the point of departure to understanding the formation of Thai

cuisine. The first text best represents modern Thai cuisine as it emerged in the early

nineteenth-century from the royal court of Bangkok. This text, known as Kap

Hechom Khrueang Khao Wan (Boat Song Admiring the Savory and the Sweets), was

composed by King Buddha Loetla Nabhalai (Rama II, r. 1809-1824). The second

chapter of this thesis looks at the foreign culinary influences of dishes by dissecting

this text. Using the Braudelian approach of conjuncture, the chapter sketches the

44 Kukrit Pramoj, Khun Chang Khun Phan, Bangkok: Dok Ya, 2001, p.4-5. 45 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.13. 46 Anthropologist have developed this terminology in studying ‘multicultural society’ like the United States of America. In this thesis, I have utilized the terminology to identify the cultural influences from ethnic groups that have been assimilated to the Thai national culture. For further on anthropological work on ‘foodway’ see Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, ‘Introduction’, Ethinic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001, pp.3-15.

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process that led various culinary codes, derived from centuries of seaborne trade, to

become part of the Siamese court’s diet, the culinary ‘high’ code. At the same time,

the Braudelian approach enables speculation about the diet of Siamese hinterland, and

thus a sketch of the culinary ‘low’ will also be examined.

The third chapter explores the formation of a Thai culinary language that came about

through the birth of the Thai cookbook. This process took place in the social space of

the royal court with the first cookbook of Thai food, Mae Khrua Hua Pa (literally,

‘skillful women chefs’, hereafter MKHP), published in 1908 by an aristocrat, Lady

Plian Phasakorawong (1847-1912). This chapter sketches the shift in the Siamese

elites’ culinary worldview about their diet, and its dialectical relation to the diet of

other people. This shift in the mentality of the Siamese elite came about through the

increasing threat of Western imperialism to Siam, best typified by the Bowring Treaty

of 1855 that eroded much of the court’s power. In response to this threat, the Siamese

elite modernized themselves by localizing western modernity – a process known as

siwilai. The cookbook was born in this historical context. This chapter focuses on

the MKHP and consults sources like literature, memoirs and recollection accounts of

Western sojourners in Siam, as well as Siamese sojourners in the West.

The fourth chapter examines at the enculturation of modern Thai cuisine and dissects

the different cultural layers of this process based on different groups of Thai food

consumers. This chapter traces the historical context in the development and

maintenance of each of these culinary codes by using sources like cookbooks,

memorial volumes, textbooks, and popular literature throughout the twentieth century.

These culinary codes allow three different perspectives of modern day Thai

gastronomic culture.

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The observation of a two-centuries process in the making of modern Thai

gastronomic culture, from a sociological point of view, shows how food preparation

and consumption corresponded to the socio-cultural dynamics of Thai society. The

label of ‘Thai cuisine’ reflects the way people articulated their culinary identity in the

context of the larger cultural landscape. Initiated by the royal court, the development

of the Thai culinary culture reflected how Thai society views itself in terms of social

classes, gender roles, and national identity. The analysis of this two century-long

process in the formation of Thai gastronomic culture also reflect how Thai society and

its ruling elite interacted with the outside world and with modernity.

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2. Formulating the Siamese Kitchen:

Royal Menu and Culinary Conjunctures

A love poem in the Thai literary canon, Kap Hechom Khrueang Khao Wan (hereafter

KHKKW), composed by then Prince Isaransundhorn (who later became Rama II), is

regarded by many to be the first comprehensive representation of the Thai culinary

repertoire.47 Written sometime during the final years of the eighteenth century, it is

believed that the poem was a dedication to Princess Bunrod, who later became Queen

Sri Suriyendra Boroma Rachini (1767-1836),48 Rama II’s wife and mother of King

Mongkut (Rama IV, r.1851-1868) and Prince Pinklao (1808-1866).49 This poem,

more importantly, was a tribute to Princess Bunrod’s legendary culinary prowess.

Princess Bunrod’s cooking was so celebrated that Lady Plian, a culinary legend of her

own, paid tribute to her almost a century later.50 The ensemble of culinary dishes in

the KHKKW was one of the earliest literary representations of a Siamese ‘high’

menu: a precursor to contemporary Thai cuisine. It also reflected the culinary

interaction of the Bangkok court with the world around them.

The forty-seven stanzas of the poem are divided into three sections: savory dishes

(khrueang kao), fruit (phonlamai), and sweets (khrueang wan). It provides reference

to fourteen types of savory dishes, fourteen kinds of fruits, and sixteen kinds of

sweets. Moreover, despite its theme of love and longing of a man for a woman, in the

47 Plian, MKHP, book 1, Bangkok: Sirijarean Sapanhan, 1908, p.29-42. 48 She will be refers as Princess Bunrod throughout this thesis. 49 Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, Kap Heruea Chao Fa Kung Lae Sepha Kong Sunthorn Phu Thang Song Rueng, (The boat song of Chao Fa Kung and two stories by Sunthorn Phu), Bangkok: Funeral Service Division, Royal Thai Army, 1955, p.5. 50 Plian, Mae Krua Hua Pa, Book 1, p.2.

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genre of a poetic boat song (kap heruea) used for pacing oarsmen in the procession of

royal barges, the detailed description of food provides not only their name, but also

the ingredients as well as the cooking techniques. Reading the poem today, its vivid

description appears still very relevant to the repertoire of dishes in Thai cuisine.

The dishes in the KHKKW belong to the ‘high’ culinary code: a menu of the Siamese

royal court in the early Rattankosin era. With the printing press still almost half a

century away from its introduction to Siam,51 the KHKKW can be considered as a

‘fluid’ representation of food, transmitted orally as sung poetry.52 Scholars attributed

the KHKKW to Princess Bunrod and pointed out that she, as wife and later Queen to

Rama II, had an enormous influence on the formulation of the Bangkok court’s

kitchen.53 Lady Plian utilized the KHKKW as a platform for her discussion of the

Royal kitchen (khrueang chaonai) in the MKHP.54 This alone reveals the importance

of the KHKKW in the Thai culinary discourse. As a text, the KHKKW was the first

piece of literature in the Thai language that provides a repertoire of food dishes

consumed by the Siamese court, and probably the inhabitants of Bangkok at the time.

This made the KHKKW the first Siamese food menu in which later generations of

cookbooks of Thai food emulate and discuss. Following the approach taken by

historian Janet Theonophano, who likens the reading of a cookbook to ‘peering

through the kitchen window’55 of that cookbook’s author, in the case of KHKKW, we

51 The printing press and Thai type characters were introduced into Siam in 1835. Kasian Tejapira, Commodifying Marxism: The Formation of Modern Thai Radical Culture, 1927-1958, Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2001, p.7. 52 ‘Fluid’ as oppose to ‘Fixity’ of printed culinary recipe. Robert Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, p.67-68. 53 Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, Kap Heruea Chao Fa Kung Lae Seapa Kong Sunthorn Phu Thang Song Rueng, p.5: Sansanee, Luk Kaew Mia Kwan, p. 142-147. 54 Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.28-44. 55 Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote, New York: Palgrave, 2002, p.6.

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are peering through the dining table of Princess Bunrod and Prince Isaransundhorn. It

is this dining table, and how some of the dishes got onto it, to which we shall now

turn our attention.

The KHKKW was composed in the historical context of what historian Nidhi

Eoseewong classifies as the rise of a Thai ‘bourgeois’ culture.56 According to his

definition, this ‘bourgeois’ culture was a new high culture that emerged from the

royal court of the early Bangkok era, a culture that was markedly different from the

aristocratic culture of Ayutthaya. This was because the Bangkok upper class, Nidhi

argues, emerged from an economic system where the main source of growth came

from the royal court’s involvement in foreign trade. This early Bangkok upper class

integrated the aristocracy, whose power rested on the control of labor, with the

mercantile class that was made up of foreign settlers. As more foreign merchants

became ennobled in the Thai feudal order (sakdina), Nidhi observes, the Thai

aristocracy also absorbed many foreign cultural traits into their way of life. The

KHKKW reflects this new ‘bourgeois’ culture from its literary style and content.

The KHKKW’s literary style demonstrates a merging of folk oral elements to the

literary tradition of Ayutthaya’s royal court, a characteristic that is typical, as Nidhi

points out, to the new ‘bourgeois’ literature of Bangkok.57 He further points out that

this new literary tradition emerged in the late Ayutthaya period,58 before flourishing

in the Bangkok court. Nidhi’s argument follows a similar observation made by Prince

Damrong (1862-1943) who pointed out that boat songs produced in the court of King

Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I, r.1782-1809) and Rama II are very similar in style

56 Nidhi Eoseewong, ‘Bourgeois Culture and Early Bangkok Literature’, in Pen and Sail: Literature and History in Early Bangkok, Bangkok: Silkwork, 2005, pp.3-151. 57 Ibid., p.25-57. 58 Ibid., p.21.

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to the boat song produced in the reign of King Boromakot (r.1732-1758) in the late

Ayutthaya period.59 It was during this period, Prince Damrong argued, that the boat

songs were first composed in Thai instead of the traditional Sanskrit.60

Further, the mentioning of foreign food ingredients in the KHKKW for example the

usage of ‘Japanese fish sauce’ (nam pla yipun) in the making of Yum Yai, or name

that indicates a point-of-origin, like the fruit ‘Chinese persimmon’ (phlub chin)61

reflects the receptive taste of Prince Isaransundhorn, and most likely many of the

Siamese aristocratic households of that time. Being one of the royal princes and later

the King himself, Prince Isaransundhorn’s receptiveness for foreign food revealed the

degree of intimacy existing between the political elite and foreign trade. Taste for

foreign cuisine suggested that the prince and his household were probably

comfortable sharing tables with foreign merchants and settlers. The familiarity with

foreign dishes supports what Nidhi sees as the emergence of a new culture, forged by

the Bangkok political elites closeness to mercantilism.62

The mentioning of dishes like kaeng matsaman (matsaman curry), kaeng chute rang

nok (birds’ nest soup), khanom chip (Chinese dumpling) in the KHKKW also

reflected Bangkok’s ethnically plural demographic.63 While some scholars have

speculate that this culinary plurality may have existed in Ayutthaya as far back as the

early seventeenth century through names of markets, folk legends, or foreigners’

59 The earliest surviving poetic boat song in Thai language was attributed to King Boromakot’s son and celebrated poet in the history of Thai literature, Prince Thammathibet, who was commonly known as Chao Fa Kung (1705-1746). See Damrong, Kap Heruea Chao Fa Kung Lae Sepha Kong Sunthorn Phu Thang Song Rueng, (The boat song of Chao Fa Kung and two stories by Sunthorn Phu), Bangkok: Funeral Service Division, Royal Thai Army, 1955, p.3. 60 Ibid., p.2-5. 61 Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.29, 39. 62 Nidhi, ‘Bourgeois Culture and Early Bangkok Literature’, p.100-101. 63 Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.32, 34, 37.

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observations,64 the KHKKW revealed for the first time how the Siamese assimilated

foreign culinary influences in great detail. It also reflected the background of

Princess Bunrod since many of these dishes were attributed to her. Princess Bunrod’s

family, like many Ayutthaya evacuees came to settle along the waterways of Klong

Bang Luang, next to King Taksin’s Thonburi palace. In spite of being born into a

noble family, she made a living, as Sansanee Verasinchai points out, selling sweets

until the age of fifteen.65 It was during her time in Klong Bang Luang that she

cultivated her cooking skills, and adopted foreign influence dishes from the ethnically

diverse settlers in the area.

The diversity of foreign dishes appealed to consumers like Prince Isaransundhorn and

Princess Bunrod. An example of this would be the way he describes the ‘mysterious

Middle Eastern (khaek) allure of the chicken curry’.66 This fascination with foreign

dishes and its ‘mysterious allure’ was rationalized by Lady Plian in the MKHP a

century later. Lady Plian categorized KHHKW’s dishes according to the standard

Thai nomenclature for foreignness like khaek, farang, and chin.67 These labels are a

form of what anthropologist Pattana Kitiarsa calls ‘Siamese Occidentalism’, a ‘Thai

production system of power/knowledge based on specific historical and culture

encounters with its Others’.68 In the case of food, these encounters came from trade,

migration, and particularly, the way Thai kings and Thai aristocracies made foreign

64 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.38-77, 106-130: Santi Sawetwimon, ‘Bazaar Talat Lae A-han Batwithi’ (Bazaar, Market, and Street Food), in A-han Miti Hang Sastra lae Sin (Food in Science and Art), eds. Chongjit Angkatavanich and Kamon Chaiyasit, Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 2005, p. 92-99: 65 Sansanee Verasinchai, Luk Kaew Mia Kwan (Royal daughters and wives), Bangkok: Matichon: 1997, p.142. 66 From the passage about Luti, a type of Thai dish similar to Indian’s Roti; ‘Ocha Na Kaeng Kai, Khlang Khong Khaek Plaek Klin Ai’ from Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.32. 67 Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.28-44, 121-23: Sombat, Kraya Niyai: and Khanom Mae Oey (Mommy’s Snack), Bangkok: Sarakadee, 2003. 68 Pattana Kitiarsa, ‘Farang as Siamese Occidentalism’, Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series, No. 49, National University of Singapore, 2005.

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dishes their own. This chapter will scrutinize the Thai adaptation of foreign food by

using Braudel’s approach of ‘historical conjunctures’ to examine culinary influences

that led to the composition of the KHKKW.69

‘Conjuncture’ is the term Braudel used to distinguish historical development that

occurs between the near-constant duration of changes, the longue durée, and the

short-term sequence of events, or histoire événementielle.70 While the near-

permanent dimension of history is determined by factors like ecology and climate,

and the short-term dimension by people, ‘conjunctures’ are often associated with

‘chain of causality’ instigated by consistent sets of economic interaction and traffic of

goods between regions over time, or the demographic dimension of a polity

determined by movement of people.71

Applying the Braudelian approach to dissecting the Thai culinary landscape at the

time the KHKKW was composed, three culinary conjunctures will be examined. The

first two parts look at the seaborne culinary conjunctures, one coming from the West

and another from the East of Siam. These two seaborne conjunctures are most

apparent in the KHKKW. The last section will look at the hinterland culinary

conjunctures, which are indistinctively represented in the KHKKW. Using other

sources, the hinterland conjunctures represent a near constant culinary interaction that

served as the foundation for the ‘high’ Siamese culinary code. This approach will

reveal the culinary dynamic that led to the assembling of dishes in Rama II’s love

poem; the earliest text that represent the Siamese ‘high’ kitchen.

69 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. II, p.892-900. 70 Braudel, On History, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980, p.27. 71 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. II, p.893, 899.

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2.1 Western Seaborne Culinary Conjunctures

Western culinary conjunctures identified by Lady Plian’s dissection of the KHHKH

are the khaek and the farang influences. In the Thai language, these two terms are

ambiguous because they are used to classify ‘Others’ in various ways. Khaek, for

instance, is used to refer to South Asians, Middle Easterners, Persians, Indo-Malays,

and most Asian Muslims.72 The term farang is an adaptation from the medieval

Arabic frangi and is used by Thais to indicate ‘every white-skinned foreigner’.73 The

culinary usage of the two terms by scholarships on dishes represented in the KHKKW

is that khaek signifies Islamic influence with a Persian accent, while farang signifies

Portuguese influences. Farang cultural influence, in the context of food, can also be

attributed to those settlers of European descend and Eurasian, who retained European

culinary heritage. Scholars have attributed the localization of ‘high’ culinary

concoction to two sites: the Ayutthaya aristocratic milieu centered on the royal court,

and the foreign settlements in Klong Bang Luang, Thonburi.

Concerning the dishes attributed to farang in the KHKKW, most scholars have

identified many of the dishes as originating in Ayutthaya. Sweet dishes in the

KHKKW such as the thong yod, thong yip, and foi thong, is sometime collectively

called khanom farang in the Thai culinary discourse.74 Lady Plian identified the

concoction to be Portuguese and to have come from Portuguese traders. It was

through these dishes, Lady Plian argued, that the European dessert cooking technique

(using milk, butter, and egg, as well as the usage of the brick oven and European

72 According to the Thai dictionary composed by the Royal Institute (Rachbanthitstan), the term khaek specifically excludes ‘Jews, North African, and African’. Phojananukrom Chabab Rachabanthitstan (Royal Institute’s Dictionary), Bangkok: Aksorn Charoen, 2003, p.205. 73 Peleggi, Thailand: The Worldly Kingdom, p.205. 74 Sombat, Khanom Mae Oey, p.83-89.

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baking techniques), was localized.75 Furthermore, she reported that King

Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r.1853-1910) encountered similar sweets on his sojourn in

Portugal in 1897.76

Historians Sansanee Verasinchai and Pramin Khruetong have attributed these culinary

treats as emerging from the Portuguese settlement of Ayutthaya during the time of

King Narai in the mid seventeenth century. The first farang to arrive in Siam were

the Portuguese, who established an embassy to the court of Ayutthaya in 1511,

following their capture of the port city of Malacca on the Malay peninsula. Prince

Damrong wrote that a large number of Portuguese began to settle and build a trading

station in Ayutthaya during the reign of King Chairacha (r.1534-1546).77 The trade

relation established between the Portuguese and Ayutthaya were soon followed by

similar arrangements with other farang - the Spanish, the Dutch, the English, the

Danes and the French - throughout the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century.

These early ‘European’ conjunctures brought not only new ingredients into Siam, but

also new cooking techniques. The strongest link in this localization of culinary code

is that between the Ayutthaya court and the Portuguese community of traders.

In terms of the sweet delicacies mentioned in the poem, historians have pointed to the

Thai adaptation by a Catholic lady called Maria Pina de Guimar,78 who worked for

King Narai (r.1656-1688) as Thao Thong Kip Ma, the sweet/snack maker of the

75 Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.122-123; book 3,p.437-439. 76 Ibid. 77 Damrong, Thai Rob Phama (War between the Thais and the Burmese), Bangkok: Klang Vidhaya, 1962, p.188-189. 78 Guimar has several names: Maria Pina de Guimar, Marie Gimard, Catherine de Torquema, Dona Guyomar de Pina. From Sansanee Verasinchai, ‘Thao Thong Kip Ma: Madame Phaulkon’ in, Tao Tong Keep Ma, Madame Phaulkon: Khanom Thai Rue Khanom Tet (Thao Thong Kip Ma, Madame Phaulkon: Thai Snack or Foreign Snack), Bangkok: Matichon, 2003, p.6.

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King.79 Maria Guimar was of mixed Japanese, Portuguese, and Bengali ancestry.

Historians believe that Guimar was born in Ayutthaya, a descendant of Yamada

Nagamasa (1590-1630), a Japanese adventurer who advanced in the court of King

Ekatotsarot (r.1605-1610) to become the ruler of Nakhon Si Thammarat, the largest

Southern tributary town under the suzerainty of Ayutthaya. She was also the wife of

Constantine Phaulkon, King Narai’s trusted chief adviser.

Thai scholar Pramin argues that because of Guimar’s Japanese ancestry, there are two

possibilities for the dish’s provenance.80 Firstly, the culinary form could have been

localized in the Portuguese and Japanese settlements in Ayutthaya. Another

possibility is that it came from a ‘second-hand’ localization that had occurred in the

sixteenth century in the Portuguese settlement in Nagasaki, and then came to Siam via

the Japanese settlement in Ayutthaya. Regardless, the sweets are attributed to the

Portuguese culinary code.

Like the farang, the khaek or Islamic culinary code is linked to another seventeenth-

century trade network, the Ayutthaya-Persia trade.81 Lady Plian classified five dishes

in the KHKKW as being khaek: kaeng matsaman, khao buri luti, and muskot.82

Indeed, in the KHKKW, the first stanza reads: ‘matsaman curry is like a lover, as

peppery and fragrant as the cumin seed. Its exciting allure would arouse any men. I

am urged to seek its source’.83 Scholars have approached the khaek culinary legacy by

79 While many have attributed the title Tao Tong Keep Ma to be a variation of Guimar’s original name, Sombat have argued that it is an old Ayutthaya court title for sweet/snack cook. From Sombat, Khanom Mae Oey, p.88. 80 Pramin Khruetong, ‘Toa Tong Keep Ma Dai Sud Khanom Thai Tong Yip Foi Tong Jak Portugate rue Yipuin?’ (Did Toa Tong Keep Ma’s recipe for Tong Yod and Foi Tong came from Portugal or Japan?), Thao Thong Kip Ma, Madame Phaulkon: Khanom Thai Rue Khanom Tet, p.127-128. 81 Santi Sawetwimon, Tumnan A-han Thai (Legends about Thai Food), Bangkok: Nammee Book, 1999: Sombat, Kraya Niyai: Thompson, Thai Food. 82 Thanphuying Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.32, 37. 83 My alteration from a partial English translation of the poem in, David Thompson, Thai Food. p.24-25.

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hypothesizing the story of individual dishes through their names. Khao buri or buri

rice, for instance, is linked to the word ‘Kabuli’, a culinary form of rice-based dish

deriving from the city of Kabul and influenced by the Persian ‘Briyani’: a dish of

roasted rice mixed with herbs famously localized across the Malay World.84 The

Siamese variation, according to Lady Plian, uses butter, milk, clove, coriander,

cardamom, and peppercorn.85 The sweet snack of muskot, its name deriving from the

port city of Muscat in the Hormuz Strait, is also reputed to have arrived in Ayutthaya

via the Persian trade, although some sources attribute it to the contacts with South

Asian Muslims.86

The story of kaeng matsaman, according to gourmet David Thomson is intertwined

with the House of Bunnag.87 The house of Bunnag is a Thai aristocratic family

descended from a Persian merchant, Sheikh Ahmad Qomi, native of Qom under the

Safavid dynasty of Iran, who settled in Ayutthaya at the beginning of the seventeenth

century. By the time of King Songtham (r.1611-1628), Sheikh Ahmad had risen to

the position of Chao Krom Ta Kwa, literally ‘Lord of the Right Pier’, in charge of all

seaborne trade traffic coming from the West to Ayutthaya. He also rose to the rank of

Chularachamontri, the royal overseer of Muslims in Siam.88

84 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.64-66. 85 Lady Plian wrote that this recipe came from her version of Prince Damrong’s recipe. See Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.205-206. 86 Sombat argue that Musgot came from Persian traders, but he said that a Thai textbook attributed the sweets to Muslim Indians. See Sombat, Khanom Mae Oey, p.83-84. 87 Thompson, Thai Food, p.329. 88 In the early days, the position of Chularachamontri was dominated by the Achmad’s decendant and Shiite Muslim both in Ayuthaya as well as in the Chakri Court of Bangkok. It was not until the post World War II government of Pridi Banomyong (1900-1983), who appointed Cham Phonhomyong, or Sumsudin Mustapha (1901-1989), in 1945, that a Sunni filled the position of Chularachamontri. See Pinya Bunnag, Muslim Phunam ‘Pratom Chularachamontri’ Khon Rak Nai Siam: Kan Duean Thang Kong Than Sheik Achmed (Muslim Leader ‘The first Chularachamontri’ in Siam: the travels of Sheik Achmad), Bangkok: Matichon, 2005.

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It is possible that Thompson attributes the kaeng matsaman to the Sheik because he

was given its recipe by a member of the Bunnag family,89 but his view is also echoed

by Thai scholar Santi Sawetwimon.90 Santi even takes it further by arguing that the

various Ayutthaya courts, because of their close relation with the Bunnag since the

time of Sheik Achmad Qomi, employed many Persian and Indian Muslim cooks.91

He supports his claim by pointing to the record of the Persian diplomat, Ibn

Muhammad Ibrahim, who was part of an embassy sent by Shah Sulaiman of the

Safavid (r. 1666-1694) to the court of King Narai. Wherever the concoction of kaeng

matsaman took place, both Thomson and Santi point to Persia as its source, and the

Bunnag in particular. The Bunnag, apart from being a very powerful family

connected to various courts until the present time, plays an important role in culinary

transmission, noticeably by the fact that Lady Plian herself was married to a

Bunnag.92

Beyond seventeenth-century Ayutthaya’s aristocratic milieu, the farang and the khaek

culinary codes were also transmitted to Siam from another site: communities that

were situated next to each other in the vicinity of Klong Bang Luang in Thonburi.

The Portuguese settlement is located in a Catholic neighborhood now called Kudi

Chin, an area synonymous with khanom farang.93 The Portuguese began to settle in

this area since establishing regular trade with Ayutthaya. Its population grew

exponentially with Portuguese, Thais with Portuguese ancestry, and other Catholics

escaping from the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767. The center of the present day

89 From Jib Bunnag, Lady Plian’s granddaughter. Thompson, Thai Food, p.133, 329. 90 Santi Sawetwimon, Tumnan A-han Thai, p.20. 91 Ibid., p.45-47. 92 Jib Bunnag, the lady who gave David Thompson the recipes for kaeng matsaman is the descendant of Lady Plian. From Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p. 61: and Thompson, Thai Food, p.329. 93 Paladisai Sithithanyakij, Krueng Thep Sueksa (Bangkok Study), Bangkok: Buntuek Siam, 2008, p.151.

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community is the Santa Cruz Catholic Church, which was originally built in 1770.

Thai scholar Sombat argues that the name of khanom farang such as tong yod, tong

yip, and foi tong was only coined in Thai during the reign of Rama I (r.1782-1809),

from various khanom farang available from Kudi Chin.94 This etymology, he argues,

makes the Ayutthayan roots of these items, while still probable, questionable.

Regarding the khaek culinary conjunctures, the Islamic community of Klong Bang

Luang is centered on the seventeenth-century masjid Ton Son, which is now a Sunni

Mosque. Originally populated by Persians and their Shiite converts, the area’s

population also grew as a result of the Persian exodus out of Ayutthaya in 1767, and a

new mosque, masjid Bang Luang, was built during this time. Many of the surviving

Ayutthaya nobles close to the Bunnag family also settled in this area, noticeably

Princess Bunrod, to whom the KHKKW was dedicated. Perhaps it was during this

time that she picked up the various culinary traits along the confluence of waterways

of Klong Bang Luang and the adjacent Kudi Chin.

This hypothesis is supported by Sombat’s argument that dishes like kaeng matsaman

are actually local concoctions by local Islamic communities in Siam. This is because

the word matsaman came from the Persian and Arabic musliman or ‘Muslim’, so that

kaeng matsaman means simply the curry of the Muslim.95 The Persian/Shiite

aristocrats, like the Bunnag, might have named the dish thus.

Today, Klong Bang Luang is known as Yan Talat Khaek, or khaek market. Scholar

San Sawewimon identifies the mixed immigration and emigration of various Islamic

groups, from Shiite to Sunni, and other ethnicities that came to and left this area

94 Sombat, Khanom Mae Oey, p.88-89. 95 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.44.

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throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.96 Further, scholar Prayurasak

Chlaidecha points out the harmonious relation between Thai Shiite and Sunni in

Bangkok during the three years they shared the Ton Son Mosque after the fall of

Ayutthaya.97 According to him, the Sunni and Shiite in the Bangkok-Thonburi area

practically lived together in this particular community. One of the reasons that led the

Muslim to settle in this area, San argues, was the market selling Halal produce. From

its Persian origin, the area was populated in the early twentieth century by Malay

Sunnis from Pattani after the sultanate of Pattani was annexed by Siam in 1909. From

the middle of the twentieth century until now, the area has been largely populated by

Muslims from South Asia.98 The distinction of Islamic sects in Bangkok is probably

less important in the making of a community than their ethnic origin.

On whether the concoction of foreign influenced dishes in the KHKKW happened in

Ayutthaya or in old settlements in Thonburi, this much is certain: the majority of

these dishes are attributed to trade with the ‘west’, which began from the seventeenth

century onwards, led by the Portuguese and Persian trade networks. These networks

brought about cultural influences, religions and most importantly, people to settle on

the Siamese shores, enabling further localizations and interactions. Further, Western

seaborne conjunctures introduced a series of new crops such as papaya (malako) and

various kinds of chili peppers (known in Thai as phrik tet)99 to Siam, as a result of a

96 Santi Sawetwimon, ‘Bazaar, Talat lae A-han Batwiti’ (Bazaar, Market, and Street Food), A-han Miti Hang Sastra and Sin, p.97. 97 Prayurasak Chlaidecha, Muslim Nai Pratet Thai (Muslim in Thailand), Bangkok: Hor Samut Klang Islam, 1996. 98 The Malay Pattani moved to settle in Tanon Tani in modern day area of ‘Bang Lampu’ in ‘Koh Rattanakosin’. Santi Sawetwimon, ‘Bazaar, Talat lae A-han Batwiti’, p.97. 99 Borrowing a terminology coined by Kukrit Pramoj, from Thannet Wongyannawa, ‘Prab Lin Chin Hai Pen Lin Thai’(Adjusting Chinese Palate into Thai), Khamkhop Fah: 60 Pee Shigeharu Tanabe (Across the Sky: Sixty Years of Shigeharu Tanabe), Bangkok: SAC, 2007, p.306.

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great historical event known as the Columbian Exchange.100 The legacy of these

crops introduction is enormous since most Thai dishes today utilize American chili

peppers.101

In short, the Ayutthayan trade with the West can be seen as part of a larger economic

conjuncture of the Indian Ocean trade system of the sixteenth to the middle of the

eighteenth century.102 The dynastic transition in 1688 led to the decline of Siamese

Western trade in terms of its importance to the crown as well as trade volume. Some

have argued that this was part of the new ruling dynasty’s xenophobia, which led to a

more ‘isolationistic’ foreign policy.103 Others, like Dhiravat na Pombejra, see it as

part of the a political transition whose realignment of trade, particularly with the

Chinese and other non-European trading partners, helped the post-1688 rulers

consolidate their power.104 The issue of administrative decline, Dhiravat argues, has

to be analyzed separately from the realm of culture.105 In this regard, the culinary

conjunctures that had taken roots from the sixteenth century onwards made a lasting

impact upon Siamese society and its royal court in spite of later political

development.

100 The phenomenon is attributed the moment that Christopher Columbus’s voyage landed in the Americas in 1492. By bringing back a series of new crops, both animals and plants from the new world, the Spaniards initiated one of the most significant global change to the culinary landscape from Africa to Europe and Asia. For further see Jean-Louis Flandrin, ‘The Early Modern Period’, in Food: Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin, Massimo Montanari, and Albert Sonnenfeld, New York: Penguin, 2000, p.355-373. 101 Montip Sittipipat, ‘Phrik Thai’ (Thai Chili), in Kin Bab Thai, Bangkok: Sang Dad, 1999, pp.151-165. 102 K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilization of the Indian Ocean from the rise of Islam to 1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean, London: Routledge 2003. 103 Michael Smithies ed., Witnesses to a Revolution: Siam 1688, Bangkok: Siam Society, 2004; E.W. Hutchinson, Adventurers in Siam in the Seventeenth Century, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1940. 104 Dhiravat na Pombejra, ‘Ayutthaya at the End of the Seventeenth Century: Was There a Shift to Isolation?’, in Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era, ed. Anthony Reid, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp.250-272. 105 Ibid., p.272.

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2.2 Eastern Seaborne Culinary Conjunctures

The eastern seaborne culinary conjuncture, or the chin conjuncture, is the food

influence that came to Siam from China. Being in close proximity to Siam, the

seaborne trade with China is a much older culinary conjuncture, stretching back to the

thirteenth and fourteenth century.106 By the fifteenth century, Ayutthaya had become

a crossroad between the Chinese and the Indian Ocean trade systems.107 Because of

this historical link, many of the Thai cooking methods have been adopted from the

Chinese. Thai vernacular kitchen utensils, such as the anglo or terracotta brazier, the

krata kon luek or wok, and taliw or spatula, as well as the technique of phat or stir-

fry, have all been localized from Chinese culinary practice, in particular those of the

Hokkien dialect group.108 Even the Thai word kaeng (curry) is believed to be of

Chinese origin because of its similarity to the word used in various Southern Chinese

dialects.109

The chin communities in Siam can be divided according to their dialect differences,

signifying their point of origin from the southern regions of China. In Siam there

were five groups of chin settlers based on their dialect: Hokkien, Teochew,

Hainanese, Cantonese, and Hakka.110 In the following discussion, the chin culinary

conjunctures can be divided into two strands according to their influences: one

dominated by the Hokkien from the fifteenth century onwards, and another by the

106 A Fourteenth century Han Chinese Wok, or Krata was unearthed by archeologist in Chonburi. Suchit, Khao Pla A-han Thai: Tummai? Majakhnai, p.123. 107 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.10. 108 Sombat, Krua Thai, pp.14, 38. 109 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.57. 110 Pimprapai Pisanbut, Sampao Siam: Tumnan Chek Bangkok (Siamese Junk: Legends of Chek in Bangkok), Bangkok: Nammee Books, 2001, p.110.

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Teochew, a strand which is interwoven with the rise of Bangkok in the early

nineteenth century.

From the early 1400s, the Hokkien had dominated the Chinese trading networks that

linked Ming China with Ayutthaya. Trade networks had been formally established

since the voyage of Admiral Cheng Ho, who visited Ayutthaya in 1408.111 Historian

Pimprapai points out that Prince Nakorn Inn, who later became King Nakharinthara

Thirat (r. 1409-1424), visited the Ming Imperial court in Beijing in 1377, a fact that

shows how the relations between the Ming court and Ayutthaya flourished during that

time.112

After the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the rise of the Qing (Manchu) in 1644, a large

number of Hokkien fled the Middle Kingdom and joined the Hokkien community in

Ayutthaya. Many Hokkien merchants were ennobled by the Ayutthaya Kings during

those times, and a network of alliances was established between the Thai court and

the Hokkien community. The Chinese foodway was certainly distinctive. The Talat

Chin or Chinese market in Ayutthaya was unique in that it offered meats that were not

available in other markets.113 The seventeenth century French diplomat to the court

of King Narai, Simon de la Loubère (1642-1729), observed that the Chinese can eat

anything, ‘even cats, dogs, horses, asses, and mules’.114

This link between the Hokkien community and the Ayutthaya court, nevertheless, was

not as strong as the link between the nobles and the farang and the khaek. At the

111 Pimprapai Pisanbut, Sampao Siam, p. 44-45. 112 Ibid. 113 Phraya Boran Rachatanintra, Tumnan Krung Kao, Bangkok: Mahamakut, 1960, p.71-72. 114 Simon de la Loubère, The Kingdom of Siam, Part II, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986, p.37.

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height of Ayutthaya’s fortunes as a trade entrepôt during the ‘Age of Commerce’,115

the attention of the court lay with the trade networks of the Indian Ocean rather than

trade with the East. Historian Pimprapai stresses this uneven attention by arguing that

while the rise of the House of Bunnag was well-documented, there were no

substantial records of the ‘Left Pier’ who was in charge of the trade with the East.

While the office of Chodikrachasethi, the noble position of the chin as royal overseer

of the Chinese community equivalent to the Chularachamontri for the khaek, was

created, the degree of importance was different. The noble rank of Chao Phraya

(Lord) was given to all Chularachamontri from its creation, whereas the

Chodikrachasethi was only granted the lower rank of Luang (lesser lord).116 This

unevenness in rank signified the court of Ayutthaya fixation with Western trade

during the ‘Age of Commerce’, the fixation that was only transformed after its fall in

1767.

This unevenness of the royal court’s attention to trade with China during the ‘Age of

Commerce’ nevertheless does not reflect continued Chinese migration into Siam.

According to W.G. Skinner, the Sino-Thai trade since the beginning of the fifteenth

century grew and flourished in the form of private trade up to the fall of Ayutthaya.117

Despite a brief disruption in the 1620s,118 with the inauguration of the royal monopoly

115 According to Anthony Reid, this was between 1450-1650. See Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, Vol. I and II, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988. 116 Pimprapai, Sampao Siam, p.58. 117 G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: an Analytical History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957, p.7-15. 118 During the reign of King Ekatotsarot, the Japanese settlers in Ayutthaya gained enormous influent with the Thai court, and dominated trade between Siam and other foreign countries. The situation improved for the Chinese during the reign of King Prasat Thong (r.1629-1656), the father of King Narai. Coming to power as an upsurper, King Prasat Thong eradicate the influential Japanese element at the court due to their possible opposition to his rule. In 1632, he drove the Japanese out of the country. After this event, the Japanese trade passed almost entirely into the Chinese hands. See Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.8-9.

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in 1629,119 the Chinese private traders were well established and flourished across

Siam. Unaffected by the isolationistic turn in foreign policy due to dynastic transition

in 1688, the Chinese trade during this time expanded, largely by incorporating the

European share of Siam’s Eastern trade.

Skinner argues that the reason why the Chinese thrived during Siam’s isolationism

was due to the fact that they ‘were never considered foreigners by the Thai’.120

Perhaps it is more apt to say that Chinese have interacted with the Thai for a very long

period of time and that the Thais, like many other ethnic groups in mainland

Southeast Asia, have been influenced by Chinese culture for centuries, thus making

things Chinese less ‘foreign’. As an ethnic group that conducted seaborne trade, the

Chinese position in Siam was unique in comparison to others. Because of this, the

uneven attention they received by the Ayutthaya court in contrast to farang and khaek

does not reflect their cultural impact on the Siamese cultural landscape. The cultural

influences of the chin dialect groups have, particularly the contrast between the

Hokkien and the Teochew, need to be further examined.

Throughout the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was also a

steady migration of Teochew Chinese to Siam. Unlike the Hokkien, who enjoyed

favor from the Ayutthaya court, the Teochew community in Ayutthaya was located in

the disreputable port area of Ban Suan Plu, outside the city walls. Apart from

Ayutthaya, Pimprapai traced the Teochew migration during this period and pointed

out that most of the Teochew settled along the east coast of Siam during this time in

places like Cha Cheong Sao, Bang Pra Kong River delta, Bang Pla Soi, Koh Kong,

119 Introduced by King Prasat Thong. See Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.6, 9. 120 Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: an Analytical History, p.11.

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Bang La Mung, and Chan Tra Bun River Delta (Chantaburi).121 It was there that the

Teochew thrived on farming. The planting of crops like peppercorn, cardamon, and

eagle wood that were synonymous with the area is attributed to the Teochew

settlers.122 From there, the Teochew traded with both Ayutthaya and Khmer coastal

towns along the Gulf of Siam.

The turning point for the Teochew community in Siam came with the fall of

Ayutthaya in 1767 and the subsequent rise of King Taksin, whose father was a

Teochew tax collector. Historian Edward Van Roy points out that the legendary

flight of Phraya Tak (King Taksin) from beleaguered Ayutthaya followed the path of

Teochew migration to the east coast of Siam to the towns of Chonburi, Rayong, and

Chathaburi.123 The Ayutthaya Teochew escaped the war by land to join their

communities along the east coast of Siam, while the Hokkien left the capital by their

junks and sailed south to places like Surat, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla, all

traditional Siamese settlements under the Ayutthayan tributary system.124

According to Nidhi, the political landscape during the post-1767 Siamese revival can

be understood in terms of King Taksin’s newfound support from the Teochew,125 and

the lack of support from the old Ayutthayan Hokkien. Nidhi explains that some of

these Hokkien have enjoyed favors from the old Ayutthayan political system, and

some even rose to prominent positions, and thus were not happy about the way King

Taksin bestowed royal favors to the Teochew. Prominent Hokkien descendants, like

121 Pimprapai, Sampao Siam, p.95. 122 Ibid. 123 Edward Van Roy, ‘Sampheng: from ethnic isolation to national integration’, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 23:1 (2008): 1(29). 124 Ibid. 125 The Teochew support for King Taksin is exemplified by their label of ‘Chin Luang’ or Royal’s Chinese, from Nidhi, Karn Muang Thai Samai Pra Chao Krung Thonburi (Thai politics during the reign of Thonburi King), Bangkok: Matichon, 1993,p.135.

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the ruler of Songkhla for example, turned to support Phraya Chakri’s faction when

King Taksin was overthrown.126 After establishing Thonburi as his royal capital,

King Taksin honoured his alliance with the Teochew by giving them land on the east

bank of the Chaophraya River, opposite his Thonburi palace. During this time, many

Teochew families rose to prominence through the favor they enjoyed from Taksin’s

court. King Taksin encouraged more Teochew migration from China to Siam to

revive the economy.127 Many of the older Teochew settlers on the Siamese east coast

also moved to the new settlement allocated by King Taksin on the east bank of the

Chaophraya during this period.128 The Hokkien-Teochew divide can still be seen in

the physical landscape of Bangkok-Thonburi today. Most old Hokkien temples are

located in Thonburi, whereas most of the old Teochew temples are on the opposite

bank of the river Chao Phraya, Koh Rattankosin, in Bangkok.129

The subsequent regime change brought about by Rama I reversed the Teochews’

fortunes. In his bid to ‘rebuild a new Ayutthaya’, Rama I brought back the

aristocracy-Hokkien alliance of the old order. With the new Chakri ruler, the site of

the new royal palace was chosen to be a Teochew settlement on the east bank of the

Chaophraya, thus forcing the Teochew settlers, who numbered around five

thousands,130 to move to the port area of Sampeng. The trade policy of King Taksin,

though, was not reversed, and Chinese and Teochew immigrants in particular

continued to flow into the new capital of Bangkok. It was not until the time of Rama

IV that the court again turned its attention to the West, notably due to the threat from

Western imperialism. The rise of Thonburi and Bangkok from late eighteenth century

126 Ibid., p.137. 127 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.32-33. 128 Pimprapai, Sampao Siam, p.155. 129 Ibid. pp.112-113, 155-156. 130 Van Roy, ‘Sampeng’.

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up until the Bowring treaty in 1855 was owed mostly to the Chinese junk trade and

migrants.

The KHKKW reflects the attitude of the Ayutthayan aristocracy of favoring the West

over Siam’s Eastern relations. Only one dish was classified as chin by Lady Plian,

and it was the kaeng chued rang nok or Birds’ nest soup,131 although persimmon fruit,

which the Thai call plab chin, was also included. If one returns to the metaphor that

the poem was a ‘window into Princess Bunrod’s kitchen’, the inclusion of only one

dish is a surprising revelation. This is because Princess Bunrod’s father, Chao Khrue

Ngoen, was a prominent Hokkien trader in the court of Ayutthaya.132 Perhaps the

simple explanation is that she learnt to cook from her Thai mother, Princess Sri

Sudarak (c.1739-1799), rather than her Chinese father. Or perhaps this is just another

example of the nature of cultural assimilation, in culinary terms at least, between the

Thai, the Chinese, and all the other urban dwellers during that time.

In terms of the dish, the choice of birds’ nest soup is also interesting since the

harvesting of birds’ nests, was a form of ‘revenue farming’ that required the crown’s

permission. Most of the notable birds’ nest harvesters at the time of early Bangkok

were Hokkien Chinese.133 This may reflect the Hokkien role in the court culinary

concoction. Nevertheless, it still a minimal role compared to the Western

conjunctures of khaek and farang. The importance of the Chinese conjunctures only

came after the age of Rama II. In the dissection of the KHKKW, Lady Plian added

seven more stanzas to Rama II’s original poem to include seven more dishes from the

131 Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.34. 132 Pimprapai, Sampao Siam, p.114. 133 Ibid., p.135-136.

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Chinese repertoire.134 The confluence of the Chinese conjuncture with the ‘high’

culinary code of the Thai will be discussed in subsequent chapters.

2.3 Hinterland Culinary Conjunctures

The Braudelian approach of conjuncture has so far provided a picture of various

culinary codes localized through seaborne interactions. Taking this methodology

beyond the KHKKW to analyze the Thai culinary code, a culinary constant is

revealed: the interaction between the Thai muang and its hinterland. The hinterland

culinary influence is less obvious than the seaborne conjuncture because it reflected a

longer time span in culinary localization and it relies mostly on the basic ingredients

of different regions, which are largely ignored in the historical record. This culinary

constant represents a Thai culinary ‘low’.

Scholars have been forced to use language, archeological finds, and calculated

guesses to locate the culinary constant. Various Thai lexical and culinary adaptations

from older civilizations, like the Khmer or the Mon, are revealed in language. For

example, the Thai word for snack (khanom) is derived from an old Khmer word,

which bears close resemblance to other neighboring languages like Lao.135 The

hinterland culinary constant largely reaffirmed the Thai cultural affiliation with, to

borrow Peleggi’s terminology, the Indic or Theravada oecumene.136

Going back to Sombat’s identification of the vernacular culinary code, the food of the

chao chonabot or rural people, stands in contrast to his idea that the Thai muang is the

134 Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.34-36. 135 Sombat, Khanom Mae Oey, p.17-19. 136 Peleggi, Thailand: The Worldly Kingdom, p.12.

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place where a more complicated culinary concoction occurs. Sombat further argues

that while the complicated codes are formulated in the muang, the ‘popular’ diet,

consisting of rice, fish, nam phrik and its accompaniment, did not change much for

ordinary people who migrated to the town from the countryside.137 Surviving the test

of time, a common expression like kin khao kin pla, literally ‘eat rice eat fish’, is still

used both as a reference to food and a form of greeting in contemporary Thai culture,

reflecting this culinary constant.

The meal of chao chonabot can then be classified as ‘low’ culinary code, which was

not restricted to the rural diet, but was also the staple among the urban vernacular diet.

In Thai culture, the representation of ‘rice’ and ‘fish’ possessed symbolic potency. It

symbolized the prosperity and abundance of the land, as well as the staple foundation

of the Thai diet. The correlation between the vernacular staple of rice and fish with

the land of the Thais comes from its mention in the thirteenth-century stone

inscription of King Ramkhamhang of Sukhothai (1279-1298), even though its famous

line, ‘there is fish in the rivers, there is rice in the fields’,138 was arguably popularized

in the 1950s by Luang Wichit Wathakan’s (1898-1962) nationalist song with that

title.139 The association between rice and fish with the abundance of the land had a

cultural currency long before the age of nationalism. It has long existed, argues

Thaweethong Hongwiwat, in the Thai language and in various poetic expressions.140

137 Sombat Plainoi, Krua Thai, p.66. 138 From Face 1, Line 16: ‘There are fish in the rivers, there are rice in the fields. The Lord does no levy toll on his Subjects.’, Luang Wichit Wathakan, Charuek Phorkhun Ramkhamhaeng (Ramkhamhang Stone Inscription), Bangkok: Prajan, 1934, pp. 19, 35-36. 139 From Luang Wichit Wathakan’s song Nai Nam Mee Pla, Nai Na Mee Khao (There are fish in the rivers, there is rice in the fields) in the play ‘Arnuparp Pho Khun Ramkhamhaeng’, 1954. 140 Thaweethong Hongwiwat, Khrua Thai, Wattanatum A-han Khrue Pumipak, Khrue Tong Tin, Lae A-han Pean Ban Khong Thai (Thai Kitchen, culinary culture of regional kitchen, provincial kitchen, and folk cuisine), Bangkok: Sang Dad, 2002, p. 117-129.

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The connection between the vernacular diet and the land conceptualized in the

language reveals the historical roots of the ‘popular’ culinary form.

Besides the staple of rice and fish, there is nam phrik, a chili paste, the most basic

staple of Thai diets from all regions. The modern Thai culinary repertoire has

identified over one hundred different variations.141 Gourmet David Thompson

identifies nam phrik as the ‘most ancient style of Thai dish’, with basic ingredients

combined by using ‘the primitive crucible’ of pestle and mortar.142 Thompson argues

that the popular ingredient of thua nao, or fermented soybeans, popularly used in

some nam phrik, especially in the Lanna and Lao culinary codes, suggests that nam

phrik could have possibly come to the Thai culinary universe from China.143

Instead, the renowned monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu attributed nam phrik to the

localization of old Indian recipes, perhaps following the spread of Theravada

Buddhism into mainland Southeast Asia.144 This explains why in the modern Thai

culinary repertoire, there are nam phrik with names like Nam Phrik Phama (Burmese

nam phrik), Nam Phrik Karen (Karen nam phrik), and even Nam Phrik Singapore

(Singaporean nam phrik).145 The last example reflects the fluid usage of the word

nam phrik in naming various kinds of chili paste according to their regional

affiliation.

Travelers to Siam in the nineteenth century all observed the Siamese basic diet

composed of rice and fish. Their observations form sketches of the nature of the

141 One recipe book has over one hundred and twenty-three types of Nam Phrik recipes in it. See Duangduean Pisalabut, Nam Phrik Roy Rod (One Hundred Taste of Chilly Pastes), Bangkok: Monkol, 1974. 142 Thompson, Thai Food, p.188. 143 Ibid. 144 From a quote provided by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu in Jan Ap, Nam Phrik See Pak (Nam phrik from four region), Bangkok: Phumpanya, 2003, In p.6. 145 Jan Ap, Nam Phrik See Pak, pp.26, 57, 58.

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urban vernacular culinary code of Bangkok of that time. The American Reverend

Noah A. McDonald (1830-1897), who came to Siam as a Protestant missionary from

1860 until 1886, observed this culinary practice and suggested that the simple diet of

rice and fish was due to religious beliefs.146 Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), the

British Ambassador to the court of Rama IV in 1855 also observed the Siamese

‘popular’ diet of rice and nam phrik.147 Bowring’s observation highlights the element

of class distinction in the basic diet, noticeably in his description of the Siamese

consumption of rice. ‘Rice’ he remarked, ‘is used by the poor as the main aliment of

life; by the opulent as an accompaniment to their meals, as bread in Europe’.148

In the same period, Anna Leonowens (1831-1915), the famed English governess to

the court of King Mongkut, also described a ‘popular’ fish commonly consumed by

the Thais in Bangkok. She identified the plathu, which she thought was a kind of

sardine, as a staple of the Siamese diet. She observed: ‘The stream is rich in fish of

excellent quality and flavor, such as is found in most of the great rivers of Asia; and is

especially noted for its plathu, a kind of sardine, so abundant and cheap that it forms a

common seasoning to the laborer’s bowl of rice. The Siamese are experts in modes of

drying and salting fish of all kinds, and large quantities are exported annually to Java,

Sumatra, Malacca, and China’.149 The plathu remains until today the ‘popular’ fish

eaten by Thais of the Central Plain.

The picture of constant conjuncture is reaffirmed by the earliest known foreign record

of the Thai ‘popular’ culinary code. The most famous of these was the seventeenth-

146 Rev. Noah A. McDonald, A Missionary in Siam (1860-1870), Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999, p.52 147 Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam; With a Narrative of the Mission to that Country in 1855, Volume II, London: John W. Parker and Son, 1857, p.108-111. 148 Ibid., p.111. 149 Anna Harriette Leonowens, The English Governess at the Siamese Court, London: Trubner & Co., 1870, p.3.

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century account from la Loubère. During his time in Ayutthaya, la Loubère not only

observed that the basic diet of the Siamese was rice and fish, but he also provided a

recipe for nam phrik. He wrote about nam phrik in detail by first describing it as ‘the

common sauce accompaniment to the Siamese meal’. This sauce is ‘plain, like

adding water with some spices, garlic, chibols (type of onion), and sometime with

Baulm’, and incorporated with ‘a mustard like sauce, which consisted of Cray Fish

corrupted (fermented fish); which they called krapi’.150 What la Loubère described

was a basic variation of nam phrik, possibly a common recipe collected during his

embassy to Ayutthaya.

Prine Narathip (1861-1931), who first translated la Loubère’s text into Thai, made an

interesting remark in brackets after this section stating that ‘la Loubère’s nam phrik

was probably not tasty (mai aroi) because it lacks sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, and

too much use of chibols’.151 The Thai translator’s remark on a translation reveals the

potent connection between flavor, as created through ingredients, and the general

understanding of this particular Thai dish, despite the two centuries time gap between

the original text, written in 1691, and the Thai translation, done in 1908.

Prince Narathip’s remark also reveals two dynamics at work in the Thai culinary

landscape. Firstly, it shows the unchanged culinary ‘form’. The culinary matrix of

nam phrik is automatically recognized two centuries later through simple description

of its ingredients. Secondly, it reveals the pace of change in the cooking process of

150 la Loubère, The Kingdom of SIam, p.35. 151 See Prince Narathip translation of la Loubère’s text. He stated that ‘la Loubère tum nam phrik main a aroi kad namtan (suger), manaw (lime), nam pla (fish sauce) kern hua hom (too much Chibols)’. This last part means that the three ingredients left out could have balance the flavor of the Chibols. Simon de la Loubère, la Loubère Pen Jodmaihet Pongsawadan Siam Khrang Krung Sri Ayutthaya Pandin Somdej Pra Narai Maharajjao (la Loubère’s letters: Siamese Chronicle of Ayutthaya During the Reign of King Narai the Great), Vol. 2, translated from English by Prince Narathip Prapanpong, Bangkok: Preedalai, 1908. p.121.

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the nam phrik. Prince Narathip’s suggestion of adding ingredients perhaps

corresponds to the culinary trend of the Prince’s own times. It could also represent, to

use Mintz terminology, the ‘bowdlerization’ of nam phrik in the way early twentieth-

century Bangkok absorbed and altered the seventeenth-century Ayutthaya version of

nam phrik learnt by la Loubère.152 Regardless of the change, the fact that Prince

Narathip recognized la Loubère’s description reveals that, conceptually, the culinary

form was historical constant.

This conceptual relationship of the culinary form nam phrik to its actual variations in

different historical contexts and urban settings reveals another aspect of the analysis

of ‘cuisine’: the distance between the language describing the culinary code and the

actual dishes prepared in the kitchen. This distance also represents the cultural gap

between the ‘popular’ dish, qualified by regional and ingredient constraint, and the

‘high’ invention of the urban center. This issue of the culinary language will be

explored in the following chapter.

This chapter has tried to portray the formulation of a distinctive Thai kitchen, using

Braudelian concepts and the text of KHKKW. Whether one believes that the culinary

repertoire in the poem came from the court of Ayutthaya, or that it came from the

confluence of culinary traits along Thonburi’s Klong Bang Luang, the KHKKW itself

has become the text to which the present day Thai culinary code subscribes. The first

theory can also be attributed to the fact that the Chakri family was close to the

majority of the ‘foreign’ aristocrats of Ayutthaya through intermarriage. Thus, the

culinary repertoire might have come from the Chakri’s family kitchen.153 The second

152 Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, p.115. 153 David Wyatt, ‘Family Politics in Seventeenth-and-Eighteenth-Century Siam’, Studies in Thai History, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994, p.102.

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theory attributes the food repertoire in the KHKKW to the confluence of cultures in

the early settlement of Thonburi. In a way, Rama II and Princess Bunrod were the

first Thai gastronomes in ‘describing a world in which eating was not a biological

imperative, but an artistic passion’.154 From this perspective, the KHKKW, I would

argue, represents the first Thai gastronomic record, the first Thai text to promote the

public culture of good eating. Here, the idealized Thai kitchen was first articulated,

and the king and his queen were its gourmets.

154 Rebecca L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000, p.150.

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3. Establishing the Thai Culinary Language:

Cultivating the Self and Others and the Birth of the Thai Cookbook

The birth of the Thai cookbook made possible the public discussion and transmission

of Thai culinary knowledge. Prior to this, culinary knowledge was transmitted orally

in the setting of private cultural space. Lady Plian’s MKHP was the first Thai

cookbook that was published in an era that can be call the age of siwilai. Historian

Thongchai Winichakul has defined siwilai in the context of Western Imperialist threat

as ‘an attempt originated among the elite, later including urban intellectuals, to attain

and confirm the relative superiority of Siam’.155 As a traditional regional power,

Thongchai explains, Siam was anxious about its position among modern nations.

Peleggi attributes this process of siwilai to the way the Thai royal elite ‘re-fashioned’

themselves, ‘both as individuals and as a social group, vis-à-vis their aspiration to

status and authority in the late nineteenth-century globalized arena’.156 In short, the

Siamese elite during the time of Lady Plian aspired to be part of the modern European

world order.

In the culinary realm, the ‘re-fashioning’ of the Thai Self expressed in the MKHP

came about through the gradual cultivation of culinary awareness; a process that

happened long before Lady Plian published her book. This chapter traces this gradual

process by looking at a variety of sources, including fiction, memoirs, and travels

literature. The first part looks at the legacy of the KHKKW and the way Rama II

155 Thongchai Winichakul, ‘The Quest for ‘Siwilai’: A Geographical Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Siam’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 59: 3, (2000), p.529. 156 Peleggi, Lords of Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002, p. 3.

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conceptualized the Siamese culinary code. The second part looks at the

transformation of the Siamese culinary worldview over the course of the nineteenth-

century, locating the Bowring Treaty of 1855 as the rupture that shifted the Siamese

understanding of Self and Others. The last part examines the birth of the Thai

cookbook and the establishment of Thai culinary language.

3.1 The Legacy of the KHKKW

The culinary knowledge reflected in the KHKKW represents Rama II’s role as the

collector of diverse culinary codes, the royal court’s role as the center of culinary

culture, and cosmopolitan Siamese urban subjects as the repository of that culture. In

order to understand the legacy of the KHKKW, the process of negotiation between

the center of the culinary culture and the repository must firstly be analyzed. This is

because this process of negotiation established a platform for the construction of Thai

culinary language a century later. The approaches from two case studies of early

nineteenth-century French culinary culture, conducted by Priscilla Ferguson and Julia

Scergo,157 are applicable in understanding the legacy of the KHKKW.

Ferguson and Scergo have independently identified the construction of a cohesive

French culinary language, used to communicate both Parisian and regional culinary

codes, as a product of the French revolution of 1789 and the urbanization of Paris

after its wake. Csergo argues that during this time, the regional cuisine was

‘reconstructed’ to allow modern urban society to ‘resurrect its provincial roots by

157 Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, ‘Is Paris France?’, The French Review, 73: 6, 2000, pp.1052-1064: Julia Csergo, ‘The Emergence of Regional Cuisines’, in Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the present, pp.500-515.

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savoring dishes consecrated by memory’.158 Ferguson classifies the new restaurant

culture of Paris, resulting from post revolution urbanization, as responsible for

creating a modern French culinary identity. In her words, ‘the pantheon that speaks

for the country speaks from the center’.159 Nineteenth-century Paris, Ferguson

argues, supplied ‘the template of French culinary civilization’.160 Both scholars argue

that it was the gastronomic language formed in Paris, the center of French society,

during the course of the nineteenth century that was exported throughout the country

and defined the overall culinary landscape of France, subsuming even the regional

culinary tradition.

To some extent, the same could be said about Bangkok in the way it dominate and

symbolized ‘Thai’ cuisine. This domination was centered on the sociological space of

the royal court. The royal court made up for the lack of restaurant culture, in

comparison to the Paris example, by assuming the role of ‘culinary pantheon’ in

creating a coherent food repertoire, as reflected by the KHKKW, from the diverse

foodway of Siam. As the royal page chanted out the KHKKW during the barge

procession, the variety of dishes from the boat song reminded the resident along the

two banks of the Chaophraya River about how their diversity, and how they came to

live in harmony together as a community. In this sense, the assimilation of food was

very much a part of state building.

The KHKKW also revealed the cosmopolitan reach of the King. It functions as a site

of memory (lieu de mémoire) linking Bangkok with the heydays of Ayutthaya.161 The

Bangkok audience of the poem was reminded of the way Thai royal power had 158 Csergo, ‘The Emergence of Regional Cuisines’, p.507. 159 Ferguson, ‘Is Paris Frace?’, p.1054. 160 Ibid., p.1059. 161 Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, 26 (Spring, 1989), pp.7-24.

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harmoniously ruled the ethnic diversity of Siam through the assimilation of culinary

forms, and the way the court had served as a site of cultural confluence. Only

decades from the fall of Ayutthaya and the turmoil of the Thonburi reign, here was a

song that not only represented diversity, but told people that their new home of

Bangkok would be as harmonious and prosperous as Ayutthaya through celebrating

their diverse kitchens. Not unlike the birth of the French culinary identity, the poem

here could signify the Thai court as a center speaking out to the diverse population of

Bangkok, and expounding on the cohesion of the new Thai state through the language

of food and love.

It must also be mentioned that Rama II enjoys the fame of ‘artist king’ in the official

Chakri historiography. His reign is remembered in the official historiography for the

revival of the ‘high culture of the Ayutthaya court.162 The culinary repertoire was a

reflection of this cultural revival. While the origin of these dishes was questioned in

the previous chapter, the repertoire itself is a reflection of the court’s ‘high’ culinary

culture. The culinary menu of elaborate dishes and the diversity of it sources

reflected Rama II’s desire to represent the culinary power of the Bangkok court, a

culinary power that could rival the most elaborate court of Ayutthaya. This chapter

looks at the shifting Siamese mentality in identifying the ‘Self’ and ‘Others’ in order

to understand food assimilation through the 19th Century.

162 Prince Chula Chakrabongse, Chao Chiwit: Siam kon yuk Prachatipatai, (Lords of life: Siam before the age of democracy), Bangkok: River Books, 1993, p.118.

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3.2 Siamese Culinary Occidentalism

The formation of Bangkok took place amidst a new global economic reality that

forced the Chakri court to redefine Siam’s place in the world. This new economic

reality was the result of the gradual European eastward conquests that had started

since the middle of the eighteenth century and had become widespread after the end

of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. This new world-system shifted Bangkok’s

international relations and simultaneously transformed their sense of Self. During this

period, the most important Other was the farang, particularly the British. During the

second half of the nineteenth-century, the Siamese collective imagination of the Other

changed following the signing of the Bowring Treaty in 1855. These two phases shall

now be examined.

3.2.1 The First Phase of Siamese Occidentalism: Siam before the Bowring Treaty

The cultural Other of farang shifted from the Ayutthayan perception to a new

outlook. In the old perception, the farang were seen as ‘movers, travelers, and

intruders into the Oriental Land, while the Siamese were primarily stationed at home

and prepared to deal with farang from their cultural base’.163 By the mid-nineteenth

century, this perception began to change dramatically as the farang were not just

‘movers and intruders’ that came to the ‘stationary’ Siamese cultural base. Now, the

Siamese themselves had to contemplate venturing out into the new world order made

by the farang in order to secure their home. Concern about the farang threat was

articulated by King Nangklao (Rama III, r. 1824-1851) on his deathbed in 1851 when

163 Pattana, ‘Farang as Siamese Occidentalism’, p.12.

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he reportedly said: ‘There will be no more wars with Vietnam and Burma. We will

have them only with the West’.164

Since the foundation of Bangkok as Siam royal capital, the gradual process of

European eastward conquests did not go unnoticed by the Siamese court; the British

in particular stood out. One by one, the British swallowed up old trade entrepôts

across the old Indian Ocean networks, starting from India since the middle of the

eighteen century and then Ceylon (Srik Lanka) in 1796. The British were right at the

Siamese doorstep by the early nineteenth century, with the British East India

Company establishing the Straits Settlement in 1826. As the British Empire in the

east was beginning to take shape, Lord Francis Rawdon-Hasting (1754-1826), the

then British governor of India, dispatched John Crawfurd to the court of Rama II in

1822. In the realm of food, Crawfurd observed that the meal prepared and served to

him was ‘a mix of Siamese and European food’.165

The culinary Other taking shape from the threat of European Imperialism was being

given representation in the Thai literary work of Sunthorn Phu (1786-1855), which

came out of the court circle during this time.166 The culinary Occidentalism first

appeared in Sunthorn Phu’s picaresque epic, Phra Apai Mani, an adventure tale set in

the imagined geography of the Indian Ocean. Parts of the story followed the journey

of Phra Apai Mani, the Rattanakosin hero, who battled with his foes across the sea.

These villains are the thamin and jon surang, based in Lanka (Sri Lanka). The term

164 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.39. 165 Chakrabongse, Jaow Chivit, p.116. 166 Sunthorn Phu’s past have been much debated topic among Thai literary scholars. The conventional belief was that Sunthorn Phu was of a lowly origin, thus his view reflected the vernacular view of Bangkok dwellers at the time. Historian Davisakd Puaksom argues otherwise, and points to Sunthorn Phu Brahmin ancestry from Petchburi, and his close connection with the court circle throughout his life. See Davisakd Pueaksom, Khon Plak Na Nana Chart Khong Krung Siam (International Strangers of Krung Siam), Bangkok: Matichon: 2003, p.12.

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thamin is used to refer to Southern Indian ethnic group, Tamil, but it is also used to

denote savages and barbarity.167 This was probably influenced by the early Bangkok

court’s localization of the Sanskrit epic, Ramayana, where Rama’s primary

antagonist, Ravana (Thotsakan), came from Southern India. As for Jon surang or

‘surang’ thief, historian believed that it is a portrait of the English (possibly derived

from the word farang).168 A Thai scholar believes that Sunthorn Phu began working

on the composition from 1833 to 1845, and the story itself was based on the first

Anglo-Burmese war in 1823-1826.169 Further, the ruler of Lanka was a woman, Nang

Lewong, a character which historian believes to have been inspired by Queen Victoria

(r.1837-1901).170 Regardless of the literary interpretation linking the villain of Pra

Apai Mani to Britain, what Sunthorn Phu represented in his epic story was the Other

from a Siamese point of view.171

The Klong tang phasa (Poem on Various Languages) was a poetic depiction of thirty-

two ‘foreigners’ known to the Siamese. It was inscribed within the Wat Phra

Chetuphon sometime during the reign of Rama III, between 1824-1851. Scholars

Davisakd Puaksom and Suchit Wongtet link Sunthorn Phu Pra Apai Mani to the

Klong tang phasa and argue that the two literary works represented the construction

of ‘Otherness’ among the Siamese elite between the reigns of Rama II and Rama

III.172 Davisakd argues that the Klong tang phasa was one of the earliest

manifestations of ‘Siamese Occidentalism’, which the Bangkok elite composed in

order to maintain its cultural superiority, comparable to the Other it has

167 Phojananukrom Chabab Rachabanthitstan (Royal Institute’s Dictionary), p.500. 168 Suvarnabhumi Sangkom Wattanatam column, ‘Sunthorn Phu Tang Pra Apai Mani Tor Tan Songkram La Muang Khuen’ (Sunthorn Phu composed Pra Apai Mani as a critique against colonialism), Matichon, 22 August 2008, p.20. 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid. 171 Davisakd, Khon Plak Na Nana Chart Khong Krung Siam, p. 17. 172 Ibid., pp.16, 25-44.

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constructed.173 Similar to Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’, the logic behind the Siamese

construction of the Other was inspired by a ‘cultural hegemonic self’.174

I would argue that the construction of ‘otherness’ during this period was a response to

the increased threat of European colonialism on the one hand, and the desire of the

Bangkok elite to establish its place in the world on the other hand. That is why the

‘others’ depicted in Klong tang phasa were dominated by the various categories of

khaek and farang, the familiar foreigners of Ayutthaya. In this sense, the Klong tang

phasa represented the early Bangkok elite’s desire to establish Bangkok’s place in the

world in the same way that Ayutthaya once occupied. As the new Indian Ocean trade

system changed, the elites of Bangkok continued to look westward in a desire to

reclaim Ayutthaya’s place as a major maritime entrepôt of the region.

In the culinary realm, the Phra Apai Mani depicts the various diets of the Other as the

binary opposite to the Thai diet. For instance, the thamin is depicted as the

uncivilized Other who does not eat rice but fish, elephants, horses, and all kinds of

animals and birds.175 Their ‘Otherness’ is also manifested in the way these thamin

‘kill their game with knives and then mix their killings in blood, vinegar, and fish

sauce, and then consume it raw’.176 According to Sunthorn Phu, this culinary practice

gave the thamin extraordinary strength. Sunthorn Phu further depicted the thamin

dressing like farang. The lifestyle of the thamin also reflected the Siamese worldview

of the ‘Others’ in the Indian Ocean network because ‘they make a living through

trade, and do not do farming or rice growing of their own’.177

173 Ibid., p.36-137. 174 Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Books, 1995, p.7. 175 Sunthorn Phu, Phra Apai Mani, book 1, Bangkok: Klang Wittaya, 1963, p.405. 176 Ibid. 177 Ibid.

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The farang, on the other hand, is represented in the story as the ruler of Lanka. The

hero, Phra Apai Mani is admitted into the city as the guest of its ruler, Nang Lewong,

and is served a mixed variety of dishes accompanied with rice, compatible to the

Siamese diet which mixed the khaek-influence dishes, like panang and kaeng ped

(duck curry), with the chin-influence dishes, like mu han (suckling pig) with its

vinegar dip.178 As a European touch, ‘brandy made of grape’ is served to Phra Apai

Mani at the end of the meal. The stark contrast between the farang ruler of Lanka and

the thamin illustrated the Siamese worldview of culinary Others to be organized

around power as imagined by Sunthorn Phu. The ruler of Lanka stands on equal

terms with the Rattankosin’s hero, whereas the raw-food-eating thamin is ‘exoticized’

through what the Sunthorn Phu imagined to be the reverse of the Siamese diet.

3.2.2 The Second Phase of Siamese Occidentalism: Siam after the Bowring Treaty

The turning point in the Siamese collective imagination of the Other is the middle of

the nineteenth century. It was during this time that Western powers were using the

military threat to open up more trade, and eventually colonize more territory for their

respective empires. According to Prince Damrong, Rama IV and many Siamese

aristocrats were fully aware of the gravity of Western gunboat diplomacy in Asia,

which resulted in unequal treaties like the Treaty of Nanking between China and

Britain (1842), or the Convention of Kanagawa (1854) between Japan and the United

States, long before Bowring arrived in Siam.179 In this historical context, the Bowring

Treaty (1855) conducted between Sir John Bowring, Queen Victoria’s emissary, and

178 Ibid. book 2, p.546. 179 Prince Damrong, Phrarachaphongsawadan Krueng Rattanakosin Rachakan Ti Ha (The Bangkok Chronicle written in the Fifth Reign), Bangkok: Chamlongsin, 1950, p.359-375.

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Rama IV, was far from equal. The demands imposed upon the Siamese court by

Bowring, like the elimination of royal trade monopoly and the granting of

extraterritoriality to British subjects, have an immense impact in transforming the

Siamese governmental and financial structure, as well as a major alteration in the

Siamese elites’ idea about themselves. Similar treaties were conducted by other

Western powers in subsequent years. This new political landscape, some scholars

argue, made the Siamese elite become more self-critical by comparing themselves

culturally to the West.180

The abolition of the royal trade monopoly resulted in the exponential growth of

Chinese businesses in Bangkok over the second half of the century.181 Initially, the

trade liberalization introduced by Bowring challenged the commercial dominance

enjoyed by the Chinese. The power of the Chinese trade monopolists, amongst whom

the Hokkien featured prominently, went into a state of decline at first.182

Nevertheless, by the expanding the market, the monopolists ended up benefiting from

their revenue farms at a far greater aggregated value.183 With the Europeans soon

realizing their lack of necessary connection and knowledge of the Siamese market,

they consolidated their position by co-opting the Chinese mercantile network inside

the country as well as the one that connects Bangkok with other Asian port cities, like

Singapore and Hong Kong. Skinner argues that the European domination of the

180 Nidhi, Krung Taek, Pra Chao Tak, Lae Prawatsat Thai (The Fall of the Capital, King Taksin, and Thai History), Bangkok: Sinlapa Wattanatum, 2005, p.10-26;Pattana, ‘Farang as Siamese Occidentalism’, p.21. 181 Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.99-109. 182 Van Roy, ‘Sampeng’. 183 Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.120.

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Siamese market was, in actuality, an injection of European capital into the existing

Chinese trading networks.184

The foreign investment made the Chinese into a leading commercial class,

particularly the retailers, merchants, business middleman and bankers connected with

Western commercial interests. Many of this new commercial class joined the ranks of

the old Chinese merchant lords (Chao Sua) in the society’s upper strata.185

Commercial opportunities also led to an influx of Chinese migration and according to

one European observer, Bangkok in 1900 resembled many characteristics of other

Chinese dominated port cities in the region.186 During this time, the Siamese

economy became more dependent on the food and agricultural industries dominated

by the Chinese.187

Dependency on the Chinese became apparent on 1 June 1910; the Chinese community

in Bangkok staged a general strike that paralyzed many businesses in the capital and

made food produce scarce and very expensive.188 This strike came about because the

Chinese were dissatisfied with the head tax, introduced in 1909.189 This event

intensified the Thais’ ill feeling towards the Chinese. This sentiment was best

manifested by King Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r.1910-1925), who portrayed the Chinese

as disloyal economic parasites in a work published in 1913 titled ‘Jews of the Orient’

184 Ibid., p.104-105. 185 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.46. 186 Charles Buls, Siamese Sketches, Bangkok: White Lotus, 1994, p.17. 187 Industries such as sugar plantations, rice mills, salt production, fisheries, vegetable gardens, and animal slaughterhouses. See Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.111- 113, 120. 188 Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand, p.162. 189 Skinner argues that the Chinese has been paying less tax than other Siamese subject when the head tax replaced the corvée system in 1899. This tax subsidy came about because there was urgent demand for labor by the Siamese government.

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(Phuak Yiw Haeng Burapha Thit).190 By designating the Chinese as the Other, Rama

VI’s sentiment was utilized by Thai nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s. The

implication that the anti-Chinese attitude had on the Thai culinary discourse shall be

discussed in the following chapter. In terms of the Siamese ‘high’ culinary code, the

anti-Chinese sentiment did not make an impact on the Thai court’s incorporation of

Chinese dishes. It could also be suggested that the Siamese elite identified Chinese

cuisine, not with the chin immigrant population in Siam, but rather with China as a

culture. This incorporation of Chinese dishes is reflected in the MKHP, where Lady

Plian added seven more dishes into the royal culinary repertoire.191

The demand of extraterritoriality for foreign subjects from Bowring and subsequent

Western powers altered the Siamese elites’ idea about themselves, their ‘foreign’

subjects, and their place in the world. In fact, this legal privilege was not a new thing

in Siam; during the reign of King Narai in seventeenth-century Ayutthaya,

extraterritoriality status was granted to Dutch and French traders.192 The historical

context of the nineteenth century relationships between Siam and various Imperial

powers, though, was very different from the time of King Narai. For one, the

Imperial powers were no longer establishing small trade factories in the Siamese

towns as during the Ayutthaya period. Rather, the Imperial powers were expanding

their influence into the hinterland across the Asian region, and in some cases, took

total control of local government apparatuses.

190 Aswaphahu (Rama Vi’s pen name), Phuak Yiw Haeng Burapha Thit Lae Muang Thai Chong Thuen Thueat (The Jews of the Orient and wake up Muang Thai), Bangkok: Foundation in Memory of King Rama VI, 1985. 191 These dishes are: Tom Kaew Samong Pla, Gaeng En Kwang Kab Hue Ue, Gaeng Baht Ped Gab Pu Talae, Pad Lin Lae Nuea Kai Priew Wan, Pad Hu Chalam, Sukorn Yang, and Hae Kueng. See Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.34-36. 192 Trongsri Atarun, Kan Kaekai Sonti Sanya Waduai Sitti Sapap Nok Anaket Kab Pratet Maha Aumnat Nai Rachasamai Prabat Somdej Pra Mongkutklao Chao Yu Hua (The extraterritoriality treaties with foreign powers during the reign of King Mongkut), Bangkok: Sangkom Sastra, 1963, p.84-85.

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In the realm of culture and collective imagination, the Others were no longer

imaginatively portrayed on the murals walls of Wat Phra Chetuphon, or as characters

in Sunthorn Phu’s celebrated story, but became new judicially powerful figures with

real presence in the social life of mid-nineteenth-century Bangkok. By the reign of

King Chulalongkorn, a new dimension was added to this extraterritoriality: the

colonial subjects of Europeans that arrived in Bangkok in search of job

opportunities.193 Superficially, this new legal dimension of extraterritoriality created

a great deal of irritation among the Siamese ruling class when the chin and khaek

merchants began to claim English or French protégé status.

More profoundly, the extraterritoriality, among other unequal treatments of Siam by

Western powers, signified that Siam was a ‘barbarous’ country, and the Siamese elite

must become like the West in order to be treated as equal.194 The anxiety created

from extraterritoriality was not felt by the Siamese elite at its onset simply because

Western community in Siam were quite small in number. It was only in 1890s, as

historian Tamara Loos points out, that extraterritoriality became a problem when the

Asian colonial subjects, like the Chinese, Cambodian, Burman, Javanese, Laotian,

and even some Siamese, claimed extraterritoriality status.195 They were able to do

this either because they were employed by foreigners or were colonial subjects of

foreign powers with treaty protection, or had illegally purchased their extraterritorial

status on the black market.

In a sense, extraterritoriality law, among many other forms of uneven interactions

between Siam and the West, replaced the relationship between the Siamese elite had 193 Ibid., p.91-92. 194 Nidhi, Krung Taek, Pra Chao Tak, Lae Prawatsat Thai (The Fall of the Capital, King Taksin, and Thai History), p.12-13. 195 Tamara Loos, Subject Siam: Family Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002, p. 43-44.

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with its Others, and put in place a clear legal hierarchy that placed the West as a

benchmark of superiority. The only way the Siamese elite could address this

unevenness was to become like the West, and in turn transform its relationship with

other non-Western Others as well. From the days of Bowring onwards, Otherness in

terms of cultural roots became a yardstick in the construction of a Thai identity, along

with the manufacturing of social hierarchical structure in the Thai mindset that was

comparable to the mid-Nineteenth Century Western framework. The Siamese elite,

from the Monarch, its aristocracy, and the educated commoners, became very self-

critical from this period onwards. Their interactions with the Others were no longer

about pure assimilation of values and techniques, but also about cultivating their own

sense of superiority in order to be placed among the elite of the civilized world.

In the culinary repertoire, this new sense of ‘Otherness’ is reflected in Lady Plian’s

dissection of KHKKW. The poem that had been composed as a coherent repertoire,

arranged along culinary categories (savory dishes, fruits, and sweets) now became a

new object for Lady Plian’s examination and explanation. The emergence of khaek,

chin, and to a lesser extent farang culinary definitions in Lady Plian’s cookbook

could also be viewed within the context of siwilai.196 The world order of the late

nineteenth century, historian Thongchai argues, was very disruptive for the Siamese

elite. The quest for siwilai was an attempt by the Siamese elite to ‘locate their

position in the new world order’, and ‘to avoid the disgrace of inferiority for being

196 Since farang dishes were only classified under sweet, their classification was not as apparent as Lady Plian’s representation of khaek and chin savory dishes from Rama II’s poem. The savory dishes were clearly divided according to their cultural origin of khaek and chin, whereas the farang heritage of several sweet dishes were discussed later by Lady Plian in these dishes own section. See Plian, Mae Krua Hua Pa, book 1, pp.29-42, 121-123.

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less civilized’.197 The new reality of the later nineteenth century forced the Siamese

elite to define its sense of ‘self’ under the European cultural hegemony.

In the realm of food culture, the new sense of ‘Self’ was constructed around the phu

di, a term that came to classify a new social classification that distinguished those

with education in social etiquette and manners adopted from Europe.198 Of these, one

of the biggest changes was the use of European cutlery, which Kukrit Pramoj

attributed to the reign of Rama IV, and became more commonly used during the reign

of Rama V.199 The introduction of European cutlery was noticed by Sir John

Bowring, as he observed a courtier’s awkwardness in using fork and knife during an

official banquet. The courtier, observed Bowring, ‘held the prongs of the fork in his

hand, not knowing which end (he) was to employ’.200 Adopting European manners

and etiquettes became an important cultural tool in attaining the status of siwilai.

Etiquette aside, culinary practices presented a more complicated picture in the light of

siwilai. Since the foundation of Bangkok, the western culinary codes (both khaek and

farang) had been of great importance to the Court, despite the fact that Bangkok was

largely populated by Chinese migrants. From European visitors such as John

Crowfurd in the early nineteenth century, to Sir John Bowring and Anna Leonowens

in the middle, all commented on how the Siamese aristocracy’s culinary repertoire

consisted of both European and Siamese dishes. When Bowring visited the court in

1855, he was given a personal welcome by Rama IV. The King offered Bowring and

his embassy a welcome lunch which Bowring described thus:

197 Thongchai, ‘The Quest for ‘Siwilai’’, p.546. 198 Kamontip Changkamon, ‘Food: Eating Etiquette Standardization and Class Identity’, Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, Silapakorn University, 2002. 199 Kukrit, introduction, Laksana Thai (Thai Characteristics), Book 3, Bangkok: Wattanapanich, 1998. 200 Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, Volume II, p.327.

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We were conducted to a large apartment in which the King is accustomed to receive the talapoins, and we found a lunch, or tiffin, laid out in perfect European taste, though the table was covered with Asiatic fruits and preserves. There were, however, American biscuits; and one dish at least that I tasted evidenced that the cuisine was one of his Majesty’s cares, and that his cooks, if not Europeans, have (to) all events received European instruction.201

The culinary mix between Siamese and European dishes was not only restricted to the

court of Mongkut. The household of Chao Phraya Sri Suriyawong (1808-1882) for

instance, also served foreign visitors mix culinary treats, as reported by Leonowens,

who attended a welcoming dinner at his house in 1862:

Dinner at the Premier’s was composed and served with the same incongruous blending of the barbaric and the refined, the Oriental and the European, that characterized the furniture and adornments of his palace.202

The court’s culinary repertoire, as described by these two foreign visitors, reveals that

both European and Siamese dishes that could be seen as a form of culinary

diplomacy, aiming to reveal the siwilai status of the court kitchen. Conversely, the

culinary mix was perhaps a true reflection of some of the Siamese aristocratic tastes

in mixing dishes from many cultures, a practice that was exposed in the KHKKW.

Another report from Bowring of a dinner at Chao Phraya Sri Suriyawong’s offers an

added dimension to the culinary mixing of the Siamese:

An excellent dinner: the soup highly spiced; birds nests, shark-fins, and sea-slugs were excellent. There was roasted pig, game, delicious fruits, and most remarkable of which was the durian, prepared with cocoa-nut milk, which even the impugners of the durian (I am not one) declared unexceptionably excellent.203

The meal that Chao Phraya Sri Suriyawong provided here as reported by Bowring

seems to belong to the Chinese culinary code, with dishes like ‘birds’ nests’, ‘shark-

201 Ibid., p.317. 202 Leonowens, The English Governess at the Siamese Court, p. 24. 203 Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, Volume II, p. 328.

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fins’, and ‘sea-slugged’ cited. What this reveals is the variations in the culinary taste

of the Siamese elites, and their correspondence with the court’s cultural orientation.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, aristocratic households like the house of

Bunnag and even the court consumed both European as well as Chinese dishes. Even

though the word ‘Thai cuisine’ was not yet coined by the age of siwilai, what was

celebrated by the Siamese elite was their cosmopolitan taste in food consumption. As

they interacted with the world, the Siamese elite’s culinary cosmopolitan mix offered

a glimpse of their power and their connection with the world around them.204 The

culinary ‘Self’ for the Siamese elite at this stage, was still largely defined by their role

as a culinary crossroads between what was East and West to the Siamese cultural

home. Their taste, in this sense, was a reflection of their seaborne economic

activities.

Moving away from the cultural home, the Siamese slowly developed a sense of their

culinary ‘self’ as they ventured out into the world. Responding to the diplomatic

initiative of Sir John Bowring, King Mongkut decided to send an embassy to court of

Queen Victoria in 1857, led by Phraya Montri Suriyawong (Chum Bunnag, 1820-

1882). An account of this embassy was kept by the embassy’s translator, Mom

Ratchothai (M.R. Krathai Isarangkul, 1820-1867).205 After arriving in London, Mom

Ratchothai observed that the English fresh market offered an abundance of meat, but

not nearly enough fruits or vegetables.206 His view of the London market reflected

the nature of nineteenth-century Bangkok market, which offered an abundance of

204 This reflects similar trend in the Bangkok elites’ consumption of material culture, or what Peleggi calls ‘prestige consumption’, see Peleggi, Lords of Things, p.21-22. 205 Ratchothai (M.R.), Nirat London (Voyage to London), Bangkok: Akrasorn Jaroentasna, 2001. 206 Ibid., p.101-102.

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vegetables and fruits, as one foreign observer noticed in 1900.207 The meat, on the

other hand, was only sold by the Chinese, as it was not popular with the Thais.208

As more and more Siamese traveled abroad in the late nineteenth century, they

experienced new – mostly European – culinary practices. These new experiences

enhanced their own sense of culinary ‘self’, through local dishes that were unavailable

to them overseas. King Chulalongkorn, for example, constantly expressed a sense of

longing for vernacular dishes such as nam phrik and khai chiew while traveling

through Europe in 1907.209 More significantly, the encounters with the culinary

‘others’ beyond the Siamese cultural home forced these travelers to reconsider their

own food in a different cultural landscape. A dialectical relationship emerged

between the home culinary practices and the ‘Others’. It was through these

experiences that the Thai culinary language was constructed.

3.3 The MKHP: The Birth of the Thai Cookbook

The discourse of siwilai in the late nineteenth century played an important part in the

creation of cookbooks in the Thai language. The Siamese elite at this stage were

eager to re-position themselves culturally to fit into the civilized world order shaped

by the European powers. In 1890, the first cookbook written in Thai was completed

within the confines of the Bangkok court. This cookbook, Tamra Tham Kab Khao

Farang (farang cookbook), was a collection of recipes translated from English and

207 Buls, Siamese Sketches, p.17. 208 Ibid., p.18. 209 King Chulalongkorn, Klai Ban (Far from home), v.1, Bangkok: Prae Witaya, 1965, p.626.

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French sources by King Chulalongkorn and one of his lesser wives, Chao Chom Nom

Jotikasthira.210

The Tamra Tam Kab Khao Farang represented the Siamese elite’s first effort in

localizing the European culinary codes (mainly British and French) through cookbook

writing. The farang cookbook provided the Siamese with a culinary window that

reveals the inner workings of a siwilai culinary repertoire. The Siamese court

retained its position as the center of the culinary ‘high’ code by translating these

European recipes. Unlike the Siamese court’s localization of seaborne culinary codes

from the time of Ayutthaya and early Bangkok, the translation of the siwilai culinary

code in the late nineteenth century represented something entirely different. Instead

of being at the pinnacle of the culinary landscape seizing upon ordinary kitchens, the

Siamese court was now the translator of siwilai. In short, by translating the European

culinary codes, the Siamese court positioned itself as the culinary bastion of siwilai, a

gateway between the civilized European world and the Siamese cultural home.

By 1908, the first Siamese recipe book, the MKHP, was compiled by Lady Plian

Phasakorawong. Inspired by Isabella Beeton’s The Book of Household Management,

Lady Plian assembled the culinary codes available to her and wrote a five-volume,

encyclopedic cookbook.211 In MKHP, cooking recipes were presented along with

stories about some of the dishes. In some part, Lady Plian even discussed the

suitability of different Siamese regions for growing different kinds of crops.212

MKHP can be also considered as a culinary example of the Thai ‘manual knowledge’

210 King Chulalongkorn, Tamra Tham Kab Khao Farang, Bangkok: Amarin, 2003. 211 Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management, London: S. O. Beeton, first edition 1861, reprint 2003. 212 Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.120-122.

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that was constructed.213 The virtues represented in Lady Plian’s cookbook is what the

Siamese elite of the time considered as essential attributes to a modern upper-class

woman (suphap-satri). In his analysis of modern Thai gender relation in the early

twentieth century, Scott Barmé points out that the desirable characteristics of a Thai

modern lady were a combination of ‘traditional’ domestic skills and ‘modern’

learning and sociability.214 Suphap-satri was defined as a counter part to suphap-

burut (gentlemen), their attributes were not fixed, but followed the modernizing

landscape of turn-of-the-century Siam, where social relations between men and

women, and between social classes, gradually changed according to the way the

Siamese ruling class translated Western modernity.

The invention of their modern meanings were inspired by the idea of instilling a set of

morality that was of contemporary relevance to the modernization process, and a

behavioral code that the modernizing Siamese elite considered fundamental to the

nation’s progress and prosperity. This new meaning of modern and refined men and

women were based largely on class consciousness, perpetuated by the literati.215 The

Sombat Phu Di, or ‘Characteristics of a Properly Behaved Person’ written by Chao

Phraya Wisut Suriyasak (Pia Malakul, 1867-1961) best exemplified the Siamese

elites’ obsession with instilling behavioral coded of conduct among its educated

populace.216 This manual provided its readers with a list of socially appropriate

behaviors. From ‘show respect to elders’, ‘do not lie’, ‘be mindful of personal

213 Craig Reynolds, ‘Thai Manual Knowledge: Theory and Practice’, Seditious Histories, Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006, p.235-240. 214 Scott Barmé, Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex, and Popular Culture in Thailand, Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield, 2002, p.11. 215 In his study of the emergence of protofeminist discourses at the turn of the century Siam, Barmé shows how the literates Thai ‘middle class’ were responsible in defining the appropriate gender role of a modern woman through popular women magazines. Barmé, Woman, Man Bangkok, p.17-37. 216 Wisut Suriyasak, Sombat Phu Di (Characteristics of a properly behaved person), Bangkok: 1916.

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hygiene’ to ‘do not show your merriment when others are suffering’, Sombat Phu Di

provided an appropriate code of conduct as defined by the ruling elite.

Historian Craig Reynolds points out that the principles informing Sombat Phu Di are

‘very bourgeois and very Buddhist’.217 These two dynamics represented the Siamese

elite’s modernization project. Reynolds argues that the Buddhist morals, which have

its own list of ‘dos and don’t’, were the ideological precursor to the phu di code, since

they also reflect the traditional Siamese education system. The articulation of the phu

di code, nevertheless, was based on social classes. The ‘proper’ social behavior was

determined by the Siamese elite, which by the late nineteenth century began to

include a phu di middle class, although still very dependent on the Bangkok court.

Applying Reynolds’ analysis of the Sombat Phu Di to Lady Plian’s cookbook, one

could say that the principles behind the MKHP were also very bourgeois on the one

hand, and very court-centric on the other. Lady Plian’s approach to the culinary art

represented continuity in the Siamese court’s culinary tradition. Not only did Lady

Plian utilize Rama II’s culinary code as one of her point of departure, she also praised

Princess Bunrod for pioneering the Bangkok court’s culinary tradition.218 The

praising of Princess Bunrod also reflected the important role of female chefs in the

Siamese court’s kitchen. With title Mae Krua Hua Pa, literally meaning ‘skillful

women chef’, it was perhaps Lady Plian’s celebration of the role of women chef in

the Siamese court, a tradition stretching back to the time of Ayutthaya.

Lady Plian’s own life reflected the exceptional role that women played in the Siamese

court. Her social role was also intertwined to the modernization and the siwilai

project of the late nineteenth-century Siamese court. In 1893, she helped set up the 217 Reynolds, ‘Thai Manual Knowledge’, p.235. 218 Plian, MKHP, Book 1, p.2.

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Red Unalom Society of Siam, which later became the Thai Red Cross Society.219

This was because in 1893, before the infamous Paknam Incident,220 there were a

series of skirmishes between French and Siamese forces over a territorial dispute on

the left bank of the Mekong River. The skirmishes resulted in many casualties that

were not sufficiently looked after. In a philanthropic spirit not unlike the privileged

Victorians in English society, Lady Plain gathered a group of female volunteers and

proposed to King Chulalongkorn to set up a charitable organization to aid the injured

soldiers. After its formation, Lady Plian became the society’s first secretary. In

1893, the king assigned Lady Plian to organize a collection of items produced by

Siamese women to send to the Chicago World Fair, for which she won several awards

for her effort.221 Prince Damrong, who was Lady Plian’s contemporary, was full of

praises for her, and described her as ‘a very intelligent and very able woman, almost

unmatched by any’.222

In terms of Lady Plian’s culinary contribution, MKHP celebrated the ‘high’ culinary

tradition of the Siamese court, especially the gastronomic vision of King Rama II.

While no recipes of the ‘popular’ culinary code of Siam were featured, the book

nevertheless presents a variety of dishes from a cross-section of the Siamese culinary

repertoire. Lady Plian offered seven hundred and forty-nine pages of detailed

instructions, tips, and suggestions for Siamese mae ban, or ‘female heads of

household’, in the art of running their kitchens and their homes. The MKHP provides

219 Santi, Tumnan A-han Thai, pp.33-35, 49-51. 220 ‘The Paknam incident’ epitomized the decades of tension between French Colonial ambition and the Siamese Court. By 1893, the Siamese clashes with the French colonial forces at various spots on the east bank of the Mekong River. The French responded by sailing two gunboats up the Chaophraya River to threaten Bangkok itself. The two ships fought their way through as the Siamese Fort of Paknam fired upon them. See Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.58-61. 221 Anake Nawigamune, Tong Chart Nai Tang Dan (Siamese Banners in Foreign Land), Bangkok: Satapon Book, 2006, p.131-132. 222 Prince Damrong, Prawat Bhukkhon Sumkan (The biographies of significant individuals), Bangkok: Banjakit, 1988, p.227.

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the modern mae ban with essential tips like the way to pick fish at a typical Siamese

market, or the way to apply modern ingredients like canned salmon to Thai cooking

techniques.223 Further, Lady Plian, for the first time, introduced the idea of fix

measurement in Thai cooking. She did this by applying units of weighing and

measuring used by Thai officials, in offices like the Royal Treasury, to the practice of

cooking.224 She also introduced the Thai mae ban with a list of measurements from

the Imperial as well as the Metric system.225 In this sense, Lady Plian was essentially

modernizing the Siamese kitchen.

Thai scholar Thanet Wongyannawa suggests that MKHP was composed for the

Siamese elite, especially women, who were not proficient in foreign languages, but

were curious about the culinary practices and the inner workings of a modern

kitchen.226 The readers of MKHP were interested in Lady Plian’s ‘modern

explanation’ of the old Siamese kitchen. What Lady Plian created, I would argue,

was a modern Siamese culinary language. She combined the tediousness of the

kitchen life, like grocery shopping and measuring, with the creative culinary

repertoire of the Siamese court. The combination of the tedious and the creative in

household management typified the emergence of the new Siamese bourgeoisie at the

dawn of the twentieth century.

The modern Siamese bourgeois kitchen reflected the larger historical context of

various reforms that took place under the guidance of King Chulalongkorn. The

effects of the Bowring Treaty of 1855 significantly transformed the old commoner-

223 Tips for shopping at a fresh market in Plian, MKHP, Book 5, p.619-632. Usage of canned salmon in Plian, MKHP, Book 3, p.428-429. 224 Applying fixed measurement units in Thai cooking in Plian, MKHP, Book 3, p.345-353. 225 Introducing Imperial and Metric measuring systems in Plian, MKHP, Book 3, p.353-373. 226 Thanet, ‘Kan ‘Khrob’, Krua Fai: Jak Tawantok su Tawanauk” (Family and fire: from west to east), in Chakawan Wittaya: Bod Kwam Per Pen Kiad Kae Nidhi Eoseewong (Universal topics: collection of essays in honour of Nidhi Eoseewong), ed. Thanet Wongyannawa, Bangkok: Matichon, 2006,p. 252.

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aristocrat dynamic of Siamese society. The liberalization of trade after 1855 made the

old corvée system largely irrelevant to the economy. The legislative reforms that took

place from the 1897 to 1905 effectively put an official end to the old corvée

system.227 In a way, MKHP represented what the Siamese mistress of the house (mae

ban) had to accommodate due to the profound changes in economic and social life.

The mistress of the house now had to fully take charge of her kitchen, from buying

ingredients in the market to understanding food preparation techniques and operating

a modern kitchen on their own. Like the guidelines of the phu di represented by the

Sombat Phu di, the MKHP articulated the definition of a modern Mae Ban. The new

culinary language had effectively modernized both the Siamese kitchen and the lady

who was in charge of it.

The end of the corvée signals a shift in the role of Siamese women across class strata.

In the royal court, Rama V designated Queen Saowapha (1864-1919) as regent during

his second tour to Europe in 1897. Among the aristocrats and the Chinese merchant

elite’s (Chao Sua) households, females were protected by law, permitted to own

property and money, as well as to conduct their own businesses. Female commoners

dominated the street and canal markets to an extent that the government appointed

women as market overseers.228 As a text, MKHP reflected the transformation of the

gender roles in the upper-class household, where the mistress has more fiscal

responsibility in the running of the modern household. Another major economic

change that had an impact on domesticity was the gradual end of the debt bondage

system, which was directly responsible for reducing the number of domestic servants.

This was perhaps why the MKHP assigned the way of managing household

227 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.61. 228 Ibid., p.102-103.

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expenditures and grocery shopping to the mistress of the house.229 Not quite as strong

as the advice given by Mrs. Beeton to English women, whom she compared to ‘the

commander of an army, or leader of any enterprise’ in managing the domesticity of

the household,230 Lady Plian urged her female readers to make the most out of her

advice in managing their households.231

Further, the MKHP established a Siamese culinary ‘fixity’: a language explaining the

Siamese culinary code.232 Like Rama II, Lady Plian collected the culinary codes from

her environment, and crafted a logical representation of what she considered a proper

Siamese ‘high’ kitchen. What she did, however, had a different impact from the

KHKKW. Lady Plian, through the writing of the first Siamese cookbook, set up a

template in the Thai language for explaining the Siamese culinary art. The creation of

culinary ‘fixity’, as scholar Amy Trubek argues, made cookery ‘less permeable to

change’.233 In the case of MKHP, Lady Plian articulated the old Siamese court’s

culinary code and established it as the standard bearer that future Thai culinary

practices would have to either comply with or challenge.

There were also other cookbooks that were written during the modernizing period of

Siamese history, such as Princess Yoawapa Phongsanit’s Tum Rub Sie Yoawapa,

published in 1939.234 Like MKHP, Princess Yoawapa’s book made modern the

Siamese kitchen, and perpetuated the new Siamese culinary language established by

Lady Plian. And similarly to MKHP, Princess Yoawapa’s cookbook represented the

Siamese elite’s kitchen, and explained it in a modern fashion.

229 Plian, MKHP, book Book 5, p.619-632. 230 Beeton, The Book of Household Management, p.1. 231 Plian, MKHP, book 1, p.2. 232 Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections, p.67-68. 233 Amy Trubek, Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Professions, Philadelphia: Univesity of Pennsylvania Press, 2000, p.11-12. 234 Princess Yoawapa Phongsanit, Tum Rub Sie Yoawapa, Bangkok: Roh Poh Udom, 1939.

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The Thai kitchen itself did not stop evolving because of the MKHP or Princess

Yoawapa’s fixity. After all, cookery and people’s appetites change over time,

regardless of how culinary printing materials represent them. The Siamese way of

localizing foreign culinary code also continued, despite the creation of the new

cookbook. This early twentieth-century culinary ‘fixity’, nevertheless, became the

point of reference for subsequent culinary debates for the Siamese. By adopting a

Western cookbook format, these new cookbooks made modern the Siamese culinary

Self. The cookbook also represent a process of ‘bourgeoisification’ of Thai court

cuisine by making the Siamese ‘high’ culinary repertoire accessible to those outside

the palace, the new literate middle class.

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4. The Enculturation of Modern Thai Cuisine:

The Standardization of the Mainstream and the Vernacular

The enculturation of Thai cuisine happened at different stages throughout the

twentieth century, and occurred in different manners in accordance to the diverse

socio-cultural spectrum of Thai food consumers. This enculturation, or the ‘process

of becoming, a process through which the implicit background of a culture, its set of

underlying and motivating assumptions and premises about the way things are and

must be, comes to be accepted,’235 can be captured by looking at the way Thai

culinary discourses interact with their different audiences through texts. Analyzing

these different layers of enculturation also reveals the larger social picture of cultural

interaction generated through shifts in the economic structure, migration,

urbanization, transformation of family structure, and the shifting of gender roles.

Agencies in this process of enculturation are the state, the media, the school, the

culinary literature and its critics, and the market.

In the Thai case, the process of enculturation worked on two different levels:

continuation of culinary tradition constructed by the court, and the invention of the

vernacular tradition cultivated by the post-absolutist nationalism. These two

processes played and continue to play their role in formulating a public understanding

of the connection of food and Thai culture.

This public understanding is at the core of modern consumption of Thai food.

Beyond being a matter of sustenance, modernity has made food a symbolic bearer of

235 Eliot A. Singer, ‘Conversion through Foodways Enculturation: The Meaning of Eating in an American Hindu Sect’, in Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity, eds. Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001, p.195.

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tradition. In this respect, the historical approach to understanding the construction of

the Thai mainstream culinary culture is similar to the study of Thai ‘bodily practice’

and evolution of the public meanings of clothing undertook by Peleggi,236 and the

study of the construction of the nation’s ‘Geo-body’ by Thongchai.237 Construction

of the national culinary norm is a process of cultivating a cultural value based on a

sense of continuity and homogeneity of Thai culture. The shifting trends in Thai food

can be understood by the way the Thai culinary Self mediated the demands of ‘Thai-

ness’ in food throughout the period of national consolidation after the fall of

absolutism, the dynamic of the Cold War, and through to the greater integration with

the global market in the late part of the twentieth century.

Cultural value in the public understanding of Thai food, similar to the study of French

food by Barthes, reflects two historical themes: on one hand, the aristocratic tradition;

and the ‘flavorful survival of an old, rural society, that is itself highly idealized’, on

the other.238 In the twentieth century, the new ‘high’ and ‘low’ of the Thai culinary

code assumed the culinary dichotomy existed between the court, the royal capital, and

the countryside. The difference is that the physical space of the kitchen, both the

‘high’ and the ‘low’, is replaced by a body of culinary knowledge constructed and

represented by cookbooks and travel guides. These textual representations form what

Ferguson calls a ‘gastronomic field’ of the Thai nation.239 This ‘gastronomic field’

constitutes a cultural space for culinary knowledge to interact, formulate, and

236 Peleggi, ‘Refashioning Civilization: Dress and Bodily Practice in Thai Nation-Building’, in The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, eds. Mina Roces and Louise Edwards, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2007, pp.65-80. 237 Thongchai, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994. 238 Barthes, ‘Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’, in Food and Drink in History, p.168,170. 239 Ferguson, ‘A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th Century France’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:3 (1998), p.598.

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eventually speak for the entire nation. It maintained the mainstream culinary template

that reflected and perpetuated the sense of the historical continuity of the nation.

4.1 The Mainstream Culinary Culture

According to Ferguson, Frech culinary national identity came about from a society

that developed a ‘gastronomy field’. Gastronomy, she argues, became a site of

memory for the French nation.240 Further, the gastronomic culture of a nation is

perpetuated by texts in order to ‘reach beyond the confines of the originating

group’.241 Texts include cookbook, culinary criticism, and in Ferguson’s case study

of Nineteenth century France, texts on gastronomy, or the art of eating good food.

The argument that the construction of a national culinary identity relies on text is

apparent in the work of Appadurai as well. Appadurai has looked specifically at the

evolving genres of cookbooks which developed in various historical contexts of post-

colonial India, and identified the cookbooks as the primary source for the construction

of a national Indian cuisine.242

Food historian Piero Camporesi has made a similar case in his discussion of the rise

of national cuisine in late nineteenth-century Italy. In the case of Italy, he argues that

one could pinpoint a singular cookbook that was responsible for constructing a

popular culinary code that became a code for national identification during the late

nineteenth century.243 This popular Italian culinary code, comprised of dishes such as

240 Ferguson, ‘Is Paris France?’, p.1061. 241 Ferguson, ‘A Cultural Field in the Making’, p.614. 242 Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine’, p. 2-22. 243 Pellegrino Artusi, La Scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene – Manuale pratico per le famiglie (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well, 1891). From Piero Camporesi, The Magic Harvest: Food, Folklore and Society, trans. J.K. Hall, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993, p.113-52

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spaghetti with tomato sauce, corn polenta, and potato gnocchi, was more important,

Camporesi argues, than the standardization of the Tuscan dialect as the modern Italian

language. All three scholars have concluded that culinary text(s) is essential in laying

the foundation for a culinary discourse that would sustain the identification linkage

between food dishes and the nation.

In the Thai case, one could identify the already mentioned MKHP by Lady Plian as

the text that started the modern Thai culinary discourse. Thanet points to the fact that

Lady Plian is already viewed as the ‘savior of Thai gastronomy’ because of her

cookbook.244 The celebrated Australian chef, David Thompson, used the MKHP as

the format for the writing of his own Thai culinary encyclopedia, Thai Food (2002).

Most importantly, he pays tribute to Lady Plian for being the first to ‘quantify

recipes’, and so to ensure that that ‘they could be faithfully reproduced’.245 True to all

the praises, MKHP brought together the ‘high’ culinary concoction of the Bangkok

court and presented it in a western format of cookbook writing. In this sense, the

MKHP made the ‘high’ culinary knowledge systematically transmittable to the

modern educated Thai middle class readership.

MKHP did not encapsulate the culinary narrative of the nation in the same way as the

various culinary texts discussed by Furguson, Appadurai, and Camporesi. Lady

Plian’s book remained potent in the public culinary discourse of Thailand because of

its role as a guideline for the conduct of Thai ‘modern’ women in the private sphere

of the home and the cosmos of the family, but not as a guideline for the consolidation

of the Thai state. Despite being the cornerstone of Thai culinary discourse, the Mae

244 Thanet, ‘Kwam Pen Anitchang Kong A-han Chin Chan Sung Nai Krung Tep: Kan Doen Tang Su Sen Tang Kong A-han Prachathipatai’ (The transient nature of Chinese high cuisine in Bangkok: Towards a democratic foodway), Sinlapa Wattanatum, 4:1, February (2003), p. 251. 245 Thompson, Thai Food, p.132-133.

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Krua Hua Pa is rather obscure in the Thai popular imagination due its lack of

circulation. From the onset, the publication was a huge commercial failure.246 This

was partly due to its expensive price at the time.247

Further, I would argue that there was a lack of interest in the ‘civilizing’ of the Thai

kitchen due to its long association with the social space of the female gender. In

comparison to the localization of knowledge and other civilizing practices, the

culinary art was given the least attention. The lack of attention, I would argue, is

because the Thai culinary art is not considered a sastra, or a body of knowledge. In

the discussion of Thai manual knowledge, historian Craig Reynolds points out that the

Indic word sastra was used as a signifier of important corpus of Thai knowledge as

well as a neologism for Western disciplinary knowledge.248 While the word tamra, or

manual, is used in referring to cookbooks, the Thai culinary realm has never been

associated with the word sastra. I would further argue that knowledge could only be

classified as a sastra when its codification of knowledge has a public relevance.

Unlike European gastronomy, Thai gastronomy remained in the shadow of the well-

defined public knowledge such as Western sciences or medicine.

Moreover, the case of the culinary discourse not being considered a sastra in the Thai

public consciousness reflects the gender dimension of Thai public knowledge.

Because culinary art has been synonymous with women and the private space of the

kitchen, the complex culinary discourse was never granted the status of sastra in its

246 Thanet, ‘Kan, Krob, Krua, Fai: Chak Tawan Tok Su Tawan Ok’, p. 252. 247 In the early 1900 the MKHP 5 books series was initially sold at 1 baht and 50 satang and later rose to 2 baht per book. This was during the time when an annual salary of a minor government official was around about 1,000 baht. Tanyarat Samattiya, The Importance of Indo-Pacific Chub Mackerel on Thai Society and Economy 1854 – 1953, Master’s thesis, Department of History, Thammasat University, 2002, p.53-54. 248 Craig Reynolds, ‘Thai Manual Knowledge: Theory and Practice’, Seditious Histories, Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006, p.218.

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male dominated public consideration. As the gourmet Thompson notes, ‘little is

known of most of the great cooks of Thailand’. While appreciated and occasionally

celebrated, the place of the Siamese women who contributed to the maintenance of

Thai cuisine ‘remained in their kitchen.’249

While food did not became a sastra, the historical context of siwilai introduced the

term a-han, the Pali rooted word for food to the Thai culinary discourse.250 In text,

this word first appeared in Lady Plian’s book. Prior to this the word commonly used

were Khrueang Khao (savory dishes) and Khrueang Wan (sweet dishes), as evident in

Prince Isaransundhorn’s KHKKW, and Kub Khao, which literally means ‘an

accompaniment with rice’, used by King Chulalongkorn’s Tamra Tham Kab Khao

Farang. The original verbal usage of the word a-han is unknown, but through text we

can linked the Pali rooted word with the modernization of food knowledge.

MKHP, nevertheless, initiated a Thai middle class ‘gastronomic field’ which is very

different from the case studies of France, India, or Italy previously mentioned.

MKHP did create its ‘Republic of Letters’ even if it was in very small numbers. Re-

printed sporadically six times over the course of the twentieth century, (in 1929, 1927,

1952, 1958, 1971, and 2002),251 the MKHP had an intriguing pattern of circulation

that reveals the peculiar nature of Thai middle class gastronomic culture: the funeral

memorial cookbook. This is because half of the MKHP literary life was due to its

publication being a part of a cremation volume. The copies of MKHP available at the 249 Thompson, Thai Food, p.133. 250 Ratchabandit Dictionary, p.1371. 251 Most of the printings have been in an incomplete manner, and only the 1927 version (used in this thesis) and the 2002 version present the most of Lady Plian’s writing. In term of circulation, figures are unreliable at best. The Suan Dusit Culinary School website revealed, for example, that only 2000 copies were printed for the 1958 version. It is also worth to mention that the 2002 edition has long been out of circulation and that the Thai National Library did not possess this particular version. See information on MKHP printing and circulation at the website of Suan Dusit Culinary Museum, of the Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, http://www.suandusitcuisine.com/food4/central/royalfood/prean_index.php. Accessed 25/6/2009.

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National Library of Thailand, for example, are all photocopies from the 1927

publication, which was part of a cremation volume from the funeral of Khunying

Pradit Amonpiman.252

The first instance when cremation volume cookbooks were given out was in 1880 at

the funeral of Queen Sunandha Kumariratana (1860-1880), the first Queen of Rama

V.253 After the end of absolutism in 1932, the royal court’s practice of publishing

cremation volume cookbooks was adapted by what could be considered the ‘Bangkok

middle class’ families. The definition of Bangkok ‘middle class’ is rather ambiguous.

Prior to the overthrow of the absolute Monarchy in 1932, Barmé identifies that the

Bangkok middle class was composed of both ‘Thai and Chinese’, with the male

component of the Thais ‘drawn largely from the lower and middle ranks of the newly

restructured bureaucracy’, and the Chinese working in the private sector as lesser

merchants, entrepreneurs, and skilled artisans.254

Reviewing the cremation cookbooks consulted during my research at the National

Library of Thailand, as well as my family and friends private collection of cremation

cookbooks,255 the panoramic view of the deceased’s social and professional

background supports Barmé’s claims. Throughout the twentieth century, the families

that sponsored cremation cookbooks came from the old aristocracy,256 the army,257 the

police,258 the bureaucracy,259 and the Chinese entrepreneurs,260 all of whom are

252 Khunying Pradit Amonpiman, MKHP (1927). 253 Montip, ‘Tumra A-han Ngarn Sop’ (cremation cookbook), in Kin Bab Thai,pp. 221-224. 254 Barmé, Woman, Man, Bangkok, p.9. 255 Thanks must go to Dr. Sumet Thantivejkul. 256 Khunying Pradit Amonpiman 1926; Mom Chao Raohinawadi Diskul 1984; Thanphuying Prasansuk Thantivejkul, 2003. 257 Khunying Wibunluk Choonhavan (wife of Field Marshall Phin Choonhavan), 1955; Wanna Ketsakun (daughter of lieutenant colonel Phra Sanwit Pricha), 1973; Air Marshall Montri Harnwichai, 1989; Lieutenant General Chalerm Mahatananon. 258 Deputy Superintendent Tim Penrot, 1976. 259 Khunying Panni Winitnaipak, 1991; Chaiwat Hutachareon, 2008.

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centered in Bangkok. A similar picture is painted by Thompson’s research in which

he used over sixty-six cremation volumes a culinary primary source in composing his

cookbook.261

Like the MKHP, these cremation volumes usually have restricted circulation.262

With a few exceptions, the cremation cookbook lacks commercial value.263 What it

possesses is the cultural capital due both to its exclusivity in circulation and the social

background of the deceased and their family. Further, the lack of commercial value

reflects the Bangkok middle class’s attitude towards the Thai culinary discourse,

which was not a body of public knowledge or sastra, but remained in the private

sphere of personal taste.

Nevertheless, the continued printing of the cremation cookbooks demonstrates the

continuation of a tradition set by the royal court that spread to the Bangkok middle

class in the post-absolutist era. It even, I would argue, constitutes a Thai

‘gastronomic field’ as it reflects a socialization of complex recipes and culinary

repertoire that were consumed by the middle class. The socialization reflects a

coherent tradition in the exchange of culinary knowledge and its enculturation.

Further, these cremation volumes represent the new bastion of the ‘high’ culinary

system of Thai society in the age of global capitalism. Reviewing some of these

examples reveals the process of ‘high’ culinary concoction in the context of

twentieth-century modernity. 260 Sanguan Lamsam, 1942; 1991. 261 Thompson, Thai Food, p.638-641. 262 An example from 2003 Creamation Volume of Thanphuying Prasansuk Tantivejkul, who was the head chef of Chitralada Palace only two thousands copied were published. See Thanphuying Prasansuk Tantivejkul, Kong Wang, Kong Wan, A-han Kaw Muang Petch (Snack, Sweets, and Savory of Petchaburi), Bangkok: Nana Sing Pim, 2003. 263 Khunying Panni Winitnaipak’s cremation volume, Krua Mae (Mother’s Kitchen) is an example of this. After her funeral in 1991, a thousand and five hundred copies were re-published and sold for charitable causes. A restaurant even adopted many of her recipes to their menu and used it as their selling point. See Khunying Panni Winitnaipak, Krua Mae, Bangkok: Modern Associate Press, 1991.

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The cremation volume of Lady Prasansuk Tantivejkul (1919-2003), who was the head

chef of Chitralada Palace, points to a variety of food recipes available in the province

of Petchaburi, both the vernacular and the elaborate.264 Introducing these recipes to

her cookbook’s audience, made up largely of the Bangkok middle class, reveals the

role of cookbooks in explaining and categorizing the provincial Petchaburi food to the

Bangkok middle class audience. Through her cookbook, food sources that were

originally available in that particular coastal area along the Gulf of Thailand can now

be made available in a Bangkok middle-class household. In short, Lady Prasansuk’s

cookbook is an example of how the Bangkok middle class classified and constructed

knowledge of ‘local’ food across the country. In this sense, Thai regional food

knowledge needs to be seen in terms in the historical context of its construction rather

than a timeless entity. Because the process of food concoction, adaptation, and

evolution across Thailand happened at a very different pace, some dishes that are

considered ‘typical’ of a certain provinces or regions may be a result of a temporal

popularity, rather than deeply rooted community traditions. The example of Lady

Prasansuk’s cookbook shows how important the Bangkok middle class of her

generation is to the process of categorizing the knowledge of Thai regional cuisine.

Another example of middle-class culinary knowledge construction is the personal

recipes of Khunying Panni Winitnaipak, published in the cremation cookbook, Krua

Mae (Mother’s Kitchen), distributed at her funeral in 1991. Reviewing Khunying

Panni’s culinary concoction is like ‘peering through her kitchen window’,265 as her

recipes offered her personal culinary inventiveness on the existing well-known

264 Thanphuying Prasansuk, Kong Wang, Kong Wan, A-han Kaw Muang Petch. 265 Theophano, Eat My Words, p.6.

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vernacular dishes such as the nam phrik and various kinds of common curry dishes.266

Her variations offer a new culinary path in gastronomic experimentation with various

vernacular dishes, and in doing so, make them part of the middle class culinary

knowledge. Further, the inventiveness of vernacular dishes like the nam phrik further

emphasizes the importance of the existing vernacular culinary culture as the base for

culinary imagination.

Both of these examples reveal the larger process of culinary enculturation. The

culinary projection from the Bangkok middle class represents the culinary mainstream

in the Thai culinary landscape. From creating regional identity to furthering the Thai

culinary discourse by personal experimentation, the Bangkok middle class became the

new social force in constructing the Thai culinary ‘high’. The knowledge of this

culinary ‘high’, nevertheless, remains in limited circulation.

Viewing these cremation cookbooks as culinary memoirs, their function appears

paradoxical. On one hand, they ‘fix’ an established culinary tradition; on the other,

they provide a ‘high’ variation of, as well as imposition of values and experience on,

the recipes they produced, and thus entail a new form of ‘fluid’ representation of

food. This representation from personal recipes cultivated an environment of culinary

expansiveness through adaptability and experimentation.

Alternatively, the cremation volumes represent a continuation of royal modernity that

spread through the middle class of Bangkok. This cultural picture reflected the

uninterrupted importance of the royal court and its worldview that is transferred to the

middle class consciousness as the harbinger of modern national life. More

importantly, it reflects how, despite the culinary distinction created, Bangkok remains

266 Khunying Panni, Krua Mae, p.84, 94-98, 114-15.

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the social space of culinary standard bearer, as well as the main cultural space that

inspired the socialization of culinary discourse. In this way, the Bangkok middle

class, like the royal court before it, represents the cultural mainstream of

manufactured culinary trends for the country. The only difference is that the Bangkok

middle class constructed a very expansive ‘gastronomic field’ that encapsulates both

the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ in its pursuit of culinary hedonism. The cultural assimilation

between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ must be understood through the larger process of

national assimilation, which was inspired by two socio-cultural forces throughout the

twentieth century. These two forces, nationalism and royal revivalism, shall be

considered next.

4.2 Standardization of the National Vernacular Culinary Culture

The standardization of the national culinary code was inspired by two historical

contexts of the twentieth-century. The first instance came about through the cultural

nationalism introduced by the post-absolutist authoritarian government of Field

Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkram (Phibun, 1897-1964), during his first tenure as ‘the

leader’ (Phunam) from December 1938 to August 1944.

The end of absolute monarchy (June 24, 1932) in Siam signaled the shift in the

perception of Thai nation-hood. In an attempted to generate a non-royal nationalism,

the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadorn) implemented various policies aimed at shifting

people’s allegiance from the monarch to a new sense of national entitlement and

connection with the land. This is best exemplified by the first proclamation the

People’s Party issued to the people of Bangkok where it stated: ‘People! Let it be

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known that our country belongs to the people and not to the king as deceived’ (sic).267

This People’s Party first concentrated on a political constitution and the ‘power of the

masses’ (amnat mati mahachon), as articulated by Prince Wan Waithayakorn (Prince

Wan, 1891-1976), in order to replace ‘royal authority’ (amnat mati pramahakasat).268

When Phibun came to power in 1938, the focus of national authority became more

identified with the fascistic themes of ‘the nation’ and ‘leader’. Among other things,

Phibun’s regime attempted to construct a new national culture (wattanatam) through a

series of cultural reforms, first being the introduction of the ‘Cultural Mandates’

(ratthaniyom), and secondly by targeting the Chinese as the Others in the process of

‘Thai-ification’ of the national economy. These two aspects of Phibun’s regime are

relevant to the construction of the standardized culinary vernacular in Thailand.

On food consumption, the Cultural Mandate prescribed that ‘Thai should consume

only food prepared from products which originate or are produced in Thailand’.269

This autarkic sentiment constructed a sense of national ownership, connecting the

people and their livelihood with the land and food sources of the country. While

historian argues that Phibun’s Cultural Mandate was a replica of the Chakri’s Royal

Mandate (Phraratchaniyom), which aimed at setting ‘proper’ and ‘civilized’

guidelines for everyday life activities,270 contemporary of Phibun, like the already

mentioned Prince Wan, would see it as a manifestation of a new form of Thai

nationalism.

267 ‘Announcement of the People’s Party’ June 24, 1932, in Thai Politics: Extracts and Documents 1932-1957, ed. Thak Chaloemtiarana, Bangkok: Thammasat, 1978, p.5. 268 Prince Wan Waithayakon, ‘Ratthaniyom’, Chumnum Pra Nipon Kong Tan Wan (Selected Writings of Prince Wan), Bangkok: Padung Suksa, 1965, p.4. 269 ‘Cultural Mandate’ No.5, in Thai Politics, p.248. 270 Reynolds, ‘National Identity and Cultural Nationalism’, in Seditious Histories, p.248.

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Further, the cultural space of the nation is redefined by an encompassing Thai identity

that replaced the ethnically diverse, plural society of Siam with a new singular ‘Thai-

ness’ that assimilated cultural diversity through an ethnocentric attitude adapted by

Phibun and his government. It was the idea of the Thai race that was cultivated

during this time that replaced the authority of the monarchy.

This replacement is significant because for the first time in Thai history the ‘proper

conduct’ and cultural self were defined, not through the throne, but through a shared

national culture, based on this ‘power of the masses’. This justification reflected the

economic ‘Thai-fication’ introduced by Phibun that ideologically construed the

Chinese as the Thai nation’s Other in the process of consolidating his nationalist

agenda. In other words, Phibun replaced the royal authority by attempting to

construct a popular Thai identity, based solely on the institution of the Thai nation and

the standardization of cultural practices.

One of the most prominent and lasting legacies of Phibun’s regime in the realm of

Thai culinary discourse was the ‘Thai-ification’ of Chinese rice noodles (kuaitiao),

Sombat estimates that the Chinese rice noodle, both in fried (phat) and blanched

(luak) forms, became a popular vernacular diet of Bangkok as a result of the Chinese

mass influx during the reign of Rama V.271 While the kuaitiao phat thai or Thai fried

noodle became an iconic Thai dish the world over, it is important to note that the

blanched rice noodle served both dried and with soup remains one of the most popular

‘street food’ across Thailand today, even more popular than the phat thai.

271 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.101-102.

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The Thai expression for a popular form of blanched noodle is kuaitiao rua or ‘boat

noodles’ was said to have originated during the great flood of Bangkok in 1942.272

This was three years after Phibun initiated the ‘Thai-ification’ of Bangkok hawker

food by forcing all government ministries, and all the school and properties connected

to these ministries, to only permit Thai hawkers on their premises.273 Sombat further

points out that during the war years, Phibun forced all government officials - from

schoolteachers to district officers - in every province to sell noodles, thus expanding

the ‘Thai-ification’ of the rice noodle by formulating a national market for noodle

consumption.274

The example of the ‘Thai-ification’ of the rice noodle is one of many culinary ‘Thai-

ifications’ of Phibun’s regime that involves the replacing of Chinese workers with

Thai. In the broader picture this ‘Thai-ification’ did not really work. In the first year

that Phibun came into power, he tried to ‘Thai-ify’ food related industries from

Chinese ownership in the area of rice milling, salt production and sales, slaughter

houses, as well as the fishing industry in terms of boat ownership.275 While the aim

of replacing Chinese with Thais nationals was to exert Thai control to the chains of

production in the food industries and other businesses, in reality these programs had

little effect in transforming the economic structure. Nevertheless, the kuaitiao dishes

became a common vernacular food across the country.

The ‘Thai-ification’ of the rice noodle and various ingredients traditionally owned by

Chinese business reflected the larger context of Phibun’s nation-building policy. This

national project ‘sought to standardize social and cultural practices across the country

272 Ibid., p.102-103. 273 Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: an Analytical History, p.262. 274 Sombat, Kraya Niyai, p.104. 275 Ibid., p.262-263.

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as well as across class’.276 With the agricultural and food industries of Siam being

originally dominated by the Chinese, the ‘Thai-ification’ process changed the food

pattern throughout the country. As Thais assumed professions in the food industry

vacated by the Chinese, the ingredients traditionally associated with the Chinese

foodway became ‘Thai’ and slowly other culinary forms in the Chinese foodway

across the nation became ‘Thai’ in the process. As I have mentioned earlier in the

discussion of culinary conjunctures, the ‘Thai-ification’ of the Phibun era localized

the Chinese foodway by making it the standard national vernacular food during this

period.

The example of the rice noodle represents a first example of standardization of a Thai

vernacular dish that transformed an ethnic foodway into a standardized national diet.

It came as result of overt government effort in ‘Thai-ifying’ the Chinese foodway,

from its production, its culinary form, through to its distribution pattern. Even the

name of the fried noodle, phat thai, signifies the ‘Thai-ification’ of Phibun’s regime.

The agency in constructing the trend here is the state, which achieved its end by

manipulation, or more precisely, its nationalization of the country’s market on both

the demand and supply side. Never before has a concerted effort been made in the

nationalization of Thai cuisine. At the ideological level, Phibun’s nationalization of

the rice noodle reflected his post-absolutist ideology of culturally replacing the

people’s attachment to the crown with a standardized national culture.

As a result, the rice noodle became a culinary vernacular that was not previously

there. The noodle, in many ways, represents a ‘success’ story of Phibun’s regime in a

sense that it cultivated a sense of a unified nation through culinary commonality. In

276 Peleggi, ‘Refashioning Civilization’, p.75.

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today’s cultural landscape, the anti-Chinese sentiment behind the construction of the

vernacular national foodway has been forgotten.

4.3 The Standardization of Middle Class Food and Royal Revivalism.

The second process of national standardization can be understood in terms of royal

revivalism, which was initiated by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat (1908-1963), and

peaked during the late 1970s and the 1980s. Political scientist Thak Chaloemtiarana

argues that Sarit made the throne the source of legitimacy for his power and policies,

as well as a contributor to social causes, which in the process, helped increase the

popularity of both the king and the government.277 Over the time, the throne becames

the source of personal prestige and social mobility for the rising middle class: for

example, the old noble titles like Khunying and Thanphuying were bestowed upon

those who ‘contributed to society’. In the realm of food, royal revivalism made the

middle class adopt the food culture of the royal court. This was done through the

publishing of cookbooks, magazine articles, and the portrayal of food in literature

generally. Most of these agencies can be attributed to the context of post-Phibun

royalism in general.

Thailand entered what Peleggi calls ‘Free World’ œcumene after the fall of the second

Phibun regime (1947-1957).278 This resulted in the ‘Americanization’ of Thai culture

in many ways. The royalist, who had been waiting for their chance to regain power,

utilized the global fight against communism as one of the justification in championing

277 Thak Chaloemtiarana, Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism, Chiang Mai: Silkworm books, 2007, p.204-218. 278 Peleggi, Thailand: the Worldly Kingdom, p.145.

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the revival of monarchism.279 In subsequent years, the threat of Communism was

increasingly invoked to justify protection of the monarchy. The throne became a

ideological site for the promotion of nationalism, which restored the monarch place at

the center of the nation. In the context of food, the revival occurred in the 1980s and

1990s.

In the culinary landscape, the legacy of Phibun remained in terms of the rice noodle

and the ‘Thai-ificaiton’ of the vernacular. A new social battleground for identity

construction was chosen as a site for effecting the monarchical revivalism. This

battleground was the rising new generation of the Bangkok urban middle class of the

late 1970s through to the 1990s. This new middle class that had emerged from the

economic progress of the 1980s was the new urban rich, made up of professionals,

technicians, executives, and managers in the commercial economy.280 The economic

boom also created a cultural void in terms of detachment from the socio-cultural

identity of the Thai nation. This void was perceived by the new middle class and its

media. Here the throne provided a sense of belonging to a stable past, and thus

became a symbolic site to which many of the new middle class look in their search of

a new cultural meaning and sense of community. It was through education and

popular magazines that this identity enculturation occurred.

I shall illustrate the process of shaping royal revivalism among the urban middle class

through two examples of popular literature that grew out of magazine serial articles

published from the late 1970s through to the 1990s. The first is a serial children

stories known as the Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek (When Grandma and

Grandpa were kids) written by Tipawani Sannitwong Na Ayutthaya (1932-2006),

279 Peleggi, ‘Refashioning Civilization: Dress and Bodily Practice in Thai Nation-Building’, p.77. 280 Baker and Pasuk, A History of Thailand, p.207.

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which first appeared in the popular weekly women magazine, Satri San (1948-

1996).281 The serial articles by Tipawani started in 1972, and were published in a set

of four books in 1977, and since then it was re-published twenty-three times, last time

in 2005.282 Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek also became part of the primary

school’s ‘extra curricula’ reading list for all state-run schools.283

The stories in Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek are historically set between the

reigns of Rama VI and Rama VII.284 The stories narrated by the grandparents to their

grandchildren, tell of various sketches of everyday life in an urban Bangkok middle-

class setting. The narrative refers to many culinary practices of the family from the

nature of a traditional Thai kitchen, table manners, conduct of a proper Thai woman

including culinary preparation and seasonal culinary patterns.285 The Muea Khun Ta

Khun Yai Yang Dek even has chapters devoted to telling the story of the courtier’s

(chao wang) life in the palace.286

Informing the child audience of the late 1970s and 1980s of the culinary practices and

other domestic values is a way, I would argue, of constructing a standardized set of

urban middle-class values in the rapidly changing socio-economic landscape of

Bangkok. The stories serve as ‘sites of memory’ in instilling such values and

constructing a shared middle-class tradition that is connected to the royal court.

Similar to the Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek, another culinary narration, written

281 Satri San magazine had a circulation of 60,000 copies printed per week according to its publisher, Satri San Kan Pim. 282 Tipawani Sannitwong Na Ayutthaya, Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek (When Grandma and Grandpa were kids) Book 1-4, Bangkok: Sopon Kan Pim, 2005.p.1-4. 283 Ibid. 284 The preface stated this time period, however in one of the story on ‘racing car’ which referred to the abdication of Rama VII and the first visit time King Ananda Mahidol (Rama VIII), which occurred in 1938 as well as the fall of Singapore in 1942. See Tipawani, Muea Khun Ta Khun Yai Yang Dek, book 3, p.63-67. 285 Ibid., book 1, p.43-46; book 2, p.57-60; book 3, p.13-18; book 4, p.193-199. 286 Ibid., book 2, p.133-141.

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in the form of magazine articles by a minor member of the royal family, Mom Luang

Nueang Ninlarat (1910-1994), for the monthly magazine Ploi Kam Petch (1992-

present), deserves to be mentioned.287 Her articles were collected and published in a

two-volume book entitled Chiwit Nai Wang or ‘Life in the Royal Court’.288

Nueang recounts each phase of her life by relating it to a dish she either tastes or

learned to cook at Suan Sunantha Palace, from the time of her youth that she spent

with the princesses in residence, Princess Malineenopadara (1885-1924) and Princess

Nipanopadol (1886-1935), both of whom were daughters of King Chulalongkorn.

Many of her stories were accounts of the 1930s towards the end of absolutism. She

recounts how the royals fled the country after 1932 and how Suan Sunantha was

practically abandoned. In terms of culinary nostalgia, Nueang provides recipes and

stories behind dishes that were typical to not only the royal court, but Bangkok during

that time. The culinary practices of the court during the early twentieth century, in

terms of its Thai conjunctures, were not that different from the culinary code of

Bangkok such as the nam phrik pla thu and satay.289 But as Nueang demonstrates, the

cultural distinction was the ‘proper’ code of conduct in the culinary practices to which

royal court subscribed.

Using the Suan Sunantha palace and its school for courtier ladies, Nipakarn school, as

the backdrop of her accounts, Nueang expresses the court’s culinary power in

representing the ‘proper’ culinary practices, both in terms of preparation in the

kitchen and food presentation. Her stories provided the audiences of 1980s Thailand

a glimpse of the ordinary life at court, and the ‘proper’ practices echoing the phu di 287 Ploi Kam Petch magazine have a bimonthly circulation of 100,000 copies. Sri Sara publishing. 288 M.L. Nueang Ninlarat, Chiwit Nai Wang (Life in the Royal Court), Vol.1-2, Bangkok: Sri Sara, 1994, p.89, 204-223. 289 Pinida Sagnanseriwanich, ‘A-han Chao Wang: Bueanglang To Sawei’ (Court food: behind the royal dining table), Sinlapa Wattanatum, 19:10 (1998), p.81.

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standard that was imposed to the courtiers during the era that promoted siwilai. At

the same time, Nueang’s narrative portrayed a realistic picture of court life. Unlike

the narrative of Ploi, the fictional character in Kukrit Pramoj’s 1981 literary classic Si

Pandin (Four Reigns), Nueang’s story present a childhood account where

mischievous and playfulness existed side by side with the cultivation of phu di

refinement and courtly propriety.290

The two narratives from the aforementioned magazine articles both functioned as sites

of memory that increased the court’s prestige. In the culinary realm, both examples

provide a constructed historical connection between the Bangkok middle class of the

late twentieth century and the royal court through manufacturing a standardized ‘Thai

identity’ (ekkalak Thai). This standardization occurs in the realm of collective

memory. Perpetuated by the middle class media, the construction of sites of memory

of the culinary and domestic life of the absolutist past painted over the populist

nationalism of Phibun’s era.

The standardization of the middle-class’s culinary memory also created a new

culinary form of standardized national culinary repertoire that centered on the old

court’s menu and fashion. It was during this time, I would argue, that a national

middle-class public eating culture emerged. Culinary narratives, such as the one by

Nueang, have inspired a new standardized public eating culture that is distinguishable

from the hawkers of the vernacular urban life. Suburban ‘garden restaurants’ (suan a-

han) and restaurants (phattakan) proliferated across Bangkok during the decades of

economic progress as public eating out became both fashionable and convenient.291

290 Kukrit, Si Pandin (Four Reigns), Bangkok: Nammee Books, 2005. 291 Gisèle Yasmeen, Bangkok’s Foodscape: Public Eating, Gender Relations, and Urban Change, Bangkok: White Lotus, 2006, p.83-89.

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Such proliferation, based on personal observation, also occurred outside of Bangkok

and spread across the country.

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5. Conclusion:

Thai Food from the Rise of the Bangkok Dynasty to its Revival

In David Thompson’s 2004 cookbook, Thai Food, the Australian gourmet relates the

genealogy of Thai culinary knowledge that was passed down to him. Thai cooking

was introduced to him by a lady called Sombat Janphetchara, who was taught how to

cook by Jib Bunnag, the granddaughter of Lady Plian. He even went on to describe

how Lady Plian’s family descended from Rama II.292 In doing so, Thompson

illustrates how his cookbook is part of the Thai culinary tradition, with cooking

methods inherited from the authors of KHKKW and MKHP. This genealogy of

knowledge reflects the scope that the transmission of Thai food tradition has taken

place over the course of two centuries. Tracing the development of Thai culinary

knowledge, from the early nineteenth-century Bangkok court to contemporary time,

this thesis offers a sketch of how the shaping of Thai gastronomy corresponded to

larger social and cultural changes in Thai society. From a sociological point of view,

these changes can be classified as the various ways Bangkok has interacted with the

outside world.

The first phase, discussed in the second chapter, came about through Bangkok court’s

consolidation after the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767. In this context, Rama II’s menu in

the KHKKW represents the accumulation of different culinary codes, gained through

centuries of seaborne trades. Utilizing the anthropological approach that differentiate

the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ culinary codes, as well as applying Braudelian temporality of

conjuncture to the analysis of KHKKW, Rama II’s menu can be looked at as an ‘high’

292 Thompson, Thai Food, p.132-133.

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food repertoire. Using similar approach on other records also offers a sketch of dishes

belonging to the culinary ‘low’.

In one sense, the food repertoire in the KHKKW reflected the ethnically diverse

foodways of Siam’s royal capital, characterized in such fashion since seventeenth-

century Ayutthaya due to its role as an important entrepôt in regional trades. The

adaptation of dishes from the capital’s diverse foodways by the court represents a

story of social development through an accumulation of centuries of culinary

interactions between the court and its urban populace. This story of social

development could be call, to used Braudel’s apt terminology, ‘unconscious

history’293: a history of unconscious elements in social development that belongs to

the time of conjuncture.

The turning point of the court’s worldview about their position in the world came in

the middle of the nineteenth-century, exemplified by the Bowring treaty of 1855. As

discussed in the third chapter, this shift in worldview resulted in the Bangkok court’s

re-fashioning themselves to be part of the modern European world order, a process of

becoming siwilai. Through this process, the modern Thai cookbook came to life, with

Lady Plian’s MKHP being the first of its kind. The birth of the cookbook reflects the

shift in the Thai court’s imagination of their culinary Self, based on what they

perceived as the diets of Others. By borrowing the repertoire of dishes in Rama II’s

KHKKW, Lady Plian’s culinary template represents the continuation of the

Bangkok’s court culinary tradition. Or to put it in another way, the MKHP made

modern the court’s food culture.

293 Braudel, On History, p.39.

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In the twentieth-century, the ‘proper’ court’s tradition was not the only representative

of Thai food culture. As illustrated in chapter four, the dynamic of social and cultural

changes in post-absolutist Thailand creates multiple layers of Thai food culture, based

on different groups of consumer’s of Thai culinary knowledge. In this new phase, the

Bangkok middle-class maintained and perpetuated the ‘proper’ court’s code among

themselves through the circulation of memorial cookbooks. I call the Bangkok’s

middle-class culinary code the culinary mainstream. A new layer of a national

vernacular foodway was created through the nationalism of Marshal Phibun in the

1940s. Dishes like the phat thai is an example of Phibun’s legacy.

Standard Thai menu emerged as the middle class adopted the royal court’s culinary

legacy during the period when royal revivalism was the prevailing national ideology.

This standardization occurs through the proliferation of food literature in the various

print media. The standardization of the court’s repertoire can also be understood in

terms of the middle class desires to preserve Thai identity (ekkalak thai) in the light of

the globalized cultural landscape of the last quarter of the twentieth-century. All of

this happened while a public eating culture in Thailand emerge with middle class

restaurants across the country.

The sketch of Thai food culture in this thesis reveals the importance of culinary texts

in the dissemination of culinary knowledge from a sociological perspective. Through

texts, the process of constructing and disseminating culinary knowledge of Thai

gastronomy is revealed. Further studies can be conducted by comparing the process of

construction and dissemination of culinary knowledge in neighboring cultural centers

within the Southeast Asian region. Comparing Thai food culture with neighboring

gastronomic fields can perhaps lead to a better understanding of how a certain

culinary trends came about. I would speculate that by moving beyond national

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boundaries, a new picture of culinary ‘high’ and ‘low’ would be revealed. Perhaps

the methodology utilized in this thesis can be applied to consider a larger perspective

of food culture in terms of a region, like Southeast Asia, or different cultural spheres

like the Indic or Sinic œcumene. Another dimension of Thai food culture untouched

by this thesis is the realm of food tourism and Thai food abroad. This topic deserves

its own study that should involve looking at the notion of authenticity of food in the

modern globalized cultural landscape.

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Appendix I:

The dishes from Prince Isaransundhorn’s

Kap Hechom Khrueang Khao Wan and their brief descriptions294

(Order of dishes based on their appearances in the boat song)

1. Savory dishes (Khrueang kao)

1.1 Kaeng matsaman nuea – This dish is a curry-typed dish. It is commonly prepare with beef (nuea) and chicken (kai). This poem specified the usage of cumin as the main source of its alluring fragrance.

Many believed that the matsaman was introduced to Siam by Muslim traders in the seventeenth century, and often linked the innovation and evolution of the matsaman to various culinary renowned ladies from the Bunnag family, due to their Persian heritage. The usage of coconut milk distinguished the matsaman from middle eastern and subcontinent curry that uses goat milk.

1.2 Yum yai – This is a type of salad dish that emphasize the sweet and sour flavor. This main flavor is then complimented by the usage of bird’s eye chili (phrik khi nu) and added saltiness. For this latter flavor, Prince Isaransundhorn suggested the use of Japanese fish sauce (nam pla yipun).

1.3 Tup lek luak – This is blanched pig spleen (tup). The poem revealed how Princess Bunrod seasoned the spleen with vinegar and pepper. The blanched spleen is sometime made into a soup dish that uses stock from pork bone as its base.

1.4 Mu naem – This is a pork dish prepare by marinating limejuice on the pork, before blanching it. The dish is then commonly seasoned with pepper and Indian Coral Tree’s leaf (thong lang).

1.5 Koi kung – This is a shrimp dish prepare by marinating limejuice to the shrimp, before quickly blanching it.

1.6 Te pho – This is not a name of a dish but a type of freshwater catfish commonly found in the waterways of the Chao Phraya delta. There is a reference about ‘sipping (sod) the flavor’ of the Te pho in the poem, so maybe Prince Isaransundhorn was referring to a soup dish. Perhaps he was referring to Kaeng te pho, a famous delicacy of Nakhon Sawan.

1.7 Namya – This is a type of sauce that accompanied Khanom chin, or a type of Mon rice noodle. The word chin here is not to be confused with the Chinese, but rather a Mon word for ‘cooked’ or ‘well-done”. It should be noted also that the Mon rice noodle looked and tasted distinctively different from Chinese rice noodle. It 294 Information about these dishes come from the Suan Dusit Culinary Museum website, http://www.suandusitcuisine.com/food4/central/royalfood/kab_index.php ; Plian, MKHP, Book 1; Thompson, Thai Food; Sombat, Khanom Mae Oei and Kraya Niyai.

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seems that the tradition of making and consuming the khanom chin namya, as sometime it is called, is spread across Thailand, with different region having its own variations. Curiously, the names khanom chin and namya were the names of two waterways (khlong) in Ayutthaya, and it is believe the dish was made and sold here and thus gave these two waterways its name.

1.8 Khao hung prung yang thet – This is a Thai variant of the ‘biryani’ or ‘briyani’, the typical rice dish from the subcontinent and part of the Middle East. The Thai name given in the poem can be literary translated to ‘a rice dish that is cooked and prepared in a foreign way’. It is now called khao buri. The poem suggested the usage of cardamom for added fragrance and flavor.

1.9 Kaeng khua som sai rakam – This is a now known as khaeng mu kua rakam. The modern variation of this curry dish used dry-fried pork prepared with fruit from a type of palm tree known as salak or zalacca (rakam in Thai). The dish variation from the poem suggested that the pork should be boiled rather than dry-fried.

1.10 Phla nua sod – This is a dish that uses thinly sliced meat, prepared by marinating it with limejuice, vinegar, and salt. The meat is then dry-fried before seasoning it with lemon balm’s leaf (bai saranae).

1.11 La-tiang – It is essentially an egg-wrapped dish. The filling, made up from shrimp and minced pork, is seasoned with coriander, cayenne pepper (phrik chi fa), sugar, and fish sauce, then fried. Then this cooked filling is then wrapped by a thin, pancake-like, fried egg. The egg used are usually duck egg instead of chicken egg.

1.12 Rum - This dish is egg-wrapped dish, similar to la-tiang. Instead of using minced pork and shrimp as its filling, rum uses diced pork meat seasoned similarly to the way shrimp and minced pork are in making the la-tiang.

Sombat Plainoi hypothesizes that both the la-tiang and rum might have something to do with Turkish trade, since the word, rum (pronounced ‘room’ in Thai) was used in describing the Turks (probably derived from the Arabic word rum that used to describe the Byzantium Eastern Roman Empire and the region of what today is modern day Turkey).295 Nevertheless, the common usage of pork meat in both rum and la-tiang suggested otherwise. Further observation must also be made that it is hard to find rum anywhere else apart from areas in Thonburi, specifically area around Ton Son Mosque, so perhaps the cooking technique (with usage of non-pork meat) came from early Turkish settler there.

1.13 Rang nok – This is birds’ nest. The poem suggested that this is a soup dish so perhaps it is referring to a dish that is called rang nok tun prepared by steaming the birds’ nest and uses chicken stock as the base of the soup. It is believed that the Chinese traders and settlers brought the technique of brids’ nest farming and cooking to Siam.

1.14 Sang wa – There are two parts to the dish; the meat and the sauce. The meat used in sang wa is usually big prawn or stomach of a fish (or ‘kidney’ if literary translating the word tai pla) as suggested in the poem. The meat is then deep-fried until golden brown, and is then broken up with spatula into small pieces until the meat 295 Sombat, Khanom Mae Oei, p.36.

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is crisp. The sauce is made up of various kind of pepper and chili, coriander, bergamot leaf, chives, and tamarin juice, accompanied with fish sauce, sugar, and lime.

2. Fruits and fruit-based dishes (Phonlamai)

2.1 Chit – Palm candy. The poem suggested that the palm candy should be immersed in syrup or sugar (chae im).

2.2 Tan – Toddy Palm candy.

2.3 Chak – Fruit from nipah or mangrove palm. The poem suggested in making loi kaeo, or a sweet preserve by immersed the chak fruit, which is sour in flavor, in sugary syrup and a little salt.

2.4 Ma prang or Mak prang – Plum mango.

2.5 Mon tong – A type of durian popularly grown in the Eastern region of Thailand in provinces like Chanthaburi.

2.6 Linchee – Lychee

2.7 Plub chin – Chinese Persimmon, the poem suggested that this fruit is also good for making a type of dessert known as namtan kuan which basically is drying the fruit and then mix it with sugar.

2.8 Noina – Sugar apple. In the passage regarding noina, Prince Isaransundhorn praised Princess Bunrod for delicately removing the seed and the skin of the noina, something that is not very easy to do.

2.9 Ked – Fruit of the manilkara tree.

2.10 Tuptim – Pomegranate.

2.11 Turian – Durian.

2.12 Langsat – Fruit from the meliaceae tree. Another popular fruit from this family of tree is known as longkong.

2.13 Ngo – Rambutan.

2.14 Sala – A type of fruit from the salacca tree.

3. Sweet dishes/snacks (Khrueang wan)

3.1 Sangkhaya na tang khai – The sangkhaya is a type of egg-based pudding. Some of the most common sangkhaya are sangkhaya bai toei (pandanus), sangkhaya fakthong (pumpkin), and khao niau sangkhaya (sticky rice). The description given by

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Prince Isaransundhorn suggested that this sangkhaya is some sort of sticky rice based pudding.

3.2 Sarim – The sarim is a vermicelli-type food ingredient, usually served cold with coconut milk. Prince Isaransundhorn also revealed how this dish was served cold (since ice and the science of refrigeration has not arrived in Siam for at least another two generations) by adding a mint-like spice known as phimsen, or patchouli. It is also believed that sarim was a Javanese influenced dessert.

3.3 Khanom lum-chiak – Sometime this dish is called khanom keson lum-chiak. It is a sticky rice dough wrap around a filling that is made up from a mixed of coconut, sugar, and jasmine scented water (num loi dok mali).

3.4 Muskot – This dessert dish is made from rice dough mixed with crushed almond (ma-tum), and butter. There is a similar dish calls harua, the only different is the usage of coconut milk instead of butter. It is believed that this dish was named after the port city of Muscat, in modern day Oman. Perhaps it was because the dish was a culinary variation of a dish from there, or the Muslim trader that introduced it to Siam comes from there.

3.5 Luti – This dish is a thin pancake, make from rice dough. It is very similar to Indian roti and it is eaten by itself and as accompaniment for curry dishes.

3.6 Khanom chip – This is a Chinese influence dish and, in many respect, is similar to a sort of dumpling. It is made of thin sheets of rice dough, enclosing minced meat and steamed.

3.7 Khanom thian – This is a pudding dish prepared by steaming. It can be prepared as a savory dish depending on the way it is seasoned. The dish is synonymous with Northern and Northeastern Thailand, where the people used khanom thian in merit making ceremony (tham bun). The Chinese in Thailand also commonly used khanom thian as offering to their ancestor during Chinese New Year.

3.9 Khanom phing – This dish is influenced by the Portuguese trading community in the seventeenth century Ayutthaya. Like the thong yod and foi thong, this dish uses ingredients like eggs and milk (sometime coconut milk) and requires baking, arguably a culinary concept introduced to Siam by the Portuguese.

3.10 Rang-rai – This is a rice dough based dessert dish. The dough is mixed with coconut milk, sugar, and white sesame while simmering over fire. Then after finished cooking, the dough is then seasoned with coconut flake.

3.11 Thong yod – This dish is influenced by the Portuguese dessert known as ovos-moles, which is typical to a coastal town of Aveiro. This dish requires a mixing of egg yoke, sugar, and water while simmering over fire. This dish is also synonymous with the story of Maria Guimar.

3.12 Thong muan – This is a type of crispy snack. It uses coconut milk, sesame, egg, flour, and salt and pepper (sometime garlic is also added), which is mixed and then fry. The dough is made into a cigar-like shape before it become crisp.

3.13 Cha mongkut – This dish reflects auspiciousness and it is usually served on occasion such as job promotion, wedding, or house warming. Its ingredients are:

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water melon seed, sugar, water with a scent of jasmine, wheat flour, and egg yoke. The main dough is made by mixing egg yoke and wheat flour and then bakes, while the watermelon seed is dry-fry with sugar. Once baked, the fried watermelon seed can be sprinkled on the side of the dough, which is usually made into small round pieces.

3.14 Bua loi – This dish consists of small pieces of dough that comes from mixing sticky rice flour with juice from pandanus leaf. It is then served in coconut milk.

3.15 Cho muang – This dessert dish is made from rice flour, mixed with Asian pigeonwings’s water (num dog anchan) and lime juice. This dough is then wrapped around a choice of filling, then steam. The choice for cho muang’s filling depends on whether the cook wants a savory dish or a sweet dessert.

3.16 Foi thong – This dish is a variation of a Portuguese dish known as fios de ovos, a delicacy from the town of Aveiro. The dish is prepared by simmering the egg yoke with sugar and made it into very thin noodle. It is believe that this dish was introduced to Siam in the middle of the seventeenth century by Portuguese traders.

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Throngsri Atarun, Kan Kaekai Sonti Sanya Waduai Sitti Sapap Nok Anaket Kab Pratet Maha Aumnat Nai Rachasamai Prabat Somdej Pra Mongkutklao Chao Yu Hua (The extraterritoriality treaties with foreign powers during the reign of King Mongkut), Bangkok: Sangkom Sastra, 1963.

Trubek, Amy, Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Professions, Philadelphia: Univesity of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Vajiravudh (King Rama VI, published this using one of his pen name; ‘Aswaphahu’), Phuak Yiw Haeng Burapha Thit Lae Muang Thai Chong Thuen Thueat (The Jews of the Orient and wake up Muang Thai), Bangkok: Foundation in Memory of King Rama VI, 1985.

Van Roy, Edward, ‘Sampheng: from ethnic isolation to national integration’, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 23:1 (2008): 1(29) Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. National University of Singapore, http://find.galegroup.com.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

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Wisut Suriyasak (Chao Phraya), Sombat Phu Di (Characteristics of a properly behaved person), Bangkok: 1916.

Wyatt, David K., Studies in Thai History, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Book, 1994.

Yaowapa Phongsanit (Princess), Tum Rub Sie Yoawapa, Bangkok: Roh Poh Udom, 1939.

Yaowanuch Vespada ed., A-han: Sub lae Sin Pandin Thai (Thai cuisine: treasure and art of the land), Bangkok: Export-Import Bank of Thailand, 2001.

Yasmeen, Gisèle, Bangkok’s Foodscape: Public Eating, Gender Relations, and Urban Change, Bangkok: White Lotus, 2006.

Unpublished Materials

Kamontip Changkamon, ‘Food: Eating Etiquette Standardization and Class Identity’, Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, Silapakorn University, 2002.

Kitiarsa, Pattana, ‘Farang as Siamese Occidentalism’, Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series, No. 49, National University of Singapore, 2005.

Tanyarat Samattiya, The Importance of Indo-Pacific Chub Mackerel on Thai Society and Economy 1854 – 1953, Master’s thesis, Department of History, Thammasat University, 2002.

Websites

Suan Dusit Culinary Museum, Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, http://www.suandusitcuisine.com/home.php