Nam Tan Maprao (Coconut Palm Sugar)

Nam tan maprao, the sugar boiled from the sap of the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, belongs to the old orchard country of the central plain, and above all to the low canal land of Samut Songkhram around the Mae Klong river, where coconut gardens have long supplied the kitchens of Bangkok. The sap is collected by climbers who cut the flower spathe and gather the sweet liquid, and the sugar is made by the families who keep those gardens. David Thompson in Thai Food treats palm sugar as the sweetener of the central Thai table, the one that gives curry pastes, relishes and desserts their rounded, caramel sweetness, and distinguishes it from the sugar of the sugar palm, Borassus flabellifer, which is made chiefly in Phetchaburi.

Nam tan maprao is the sugar made by boiling coconut palm sap until it thickens and sets. It is sold as soft, pale golden to amber discs or in small moulded cakes, and sometimes in a thick paste packed in a pot. The best has a fine, slightly damp crumb, a clean fragrance of caramel and toasted coconut, and dissolves easily into a syrup. It is sweeter in a mellow way than refined sugar and carries a faint smokiness. It differs from nam tan pip, the firmer, darker cake of the sugar palm, and from cane sugar, which has no such depth. It is pounded or shaved before use, then melted into dressings, simmered into sauces, or cooked down for sweets.

Nam tan maprao is eaten in the curry pastes, the sweet-sour-salty dressings and the relishes of the central Thai table, and in coconut sweets, where it is cooked with coconut milk. It sits beside fish sauce, lime juice and tamarind, whose salt and acid it tempers, and beside chilli, whose heat it rounds. A dish of sour or salty character is drunk with something cold and light, such as water or a lager, which cleanses the palate. The structural reason is balance: the sugar softens the edges of acid, salt and heat so that no single one dominates, and its caramel depth gives the dish a base that white sugar cannot.