The Mon and the Khmer in the central Thai kitchen

The central plains of the Chao Phraya basin were settled long before the Thai kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Bangkok, and the peoples who held them earlier were chiefly Mon and Khmer speakers. The Mon are associated with the lower reaches of the river and the western country, the Khmer with the eastern lands and the old courts of the Angkorian sphere. David Thompson, in Thai Food, treats the cooking of the Thai centre as a layered inheritance in which these two peoples stand among the first contributors, long before the later arrivals from China, Portugal and the Americas.

The central Thai kitchen is a court and river cuisine, and its foundations are older than the Thai who came to rule it. The plains of the Chao Phraya basin were held earlier by Mon and Khmer speakers, and the cook who wishes to understand why a central curry is built as it is should begin with a kitchen of rice, river fish, fermented seasoning and pounded pastes. The Khmer contribution is read chiefly in the structure of the curry and the soup. Aromatic roots and leaves, among them galangal Alpinia galanga, lemongrass Cymbopogon citratus and makrut Citrus hystrix, are pounded together with salted fish or shrimp paste to form the base of a dish. Sourness from tamarind and bitter leaves, and the habit of balancing a pungent paste against a mild, fatty or sour liquid, belong to this older mainland tradition. The Khmer kitchen of the Angkorian sphere and the central Thai kitchen share this grammar, and the Thai court cooks refined it rather than replaced it. The Mon are associated with the lower reaches of the river and the western country, and their place in the life of the river towns left its mark on the cooking of the plains. Their contribution is better understood as a shared habit of working than as a list of named recipes: a cuisine built on rice, fish from the river and the paddy, and seasonings preserved by salt and fermentation. What the two peoples gave the central kitchen is therefore less a set of famous recipes than a manner of working. The pounding of pastes in a stone mortar, the dependence on fermented fish and shrimp for depth, and the arrangement of a meal around rice with several dishes set against one another all belong to the mainland tradition they shared. The Thai court kitchens of Ayutthaya and Bangkok inherited this manner and brought it to a high polish, so that what is called central Thai cooking carries Mon and Khmer practice within it.

The older mainland palate favours salt, sour and bitter, with fermented fish or shrimp giving a savoury depth, and sweetness and heat were added later to the central table. A cook tasting a central Thai curry should look for this structure first, the aromatics and ferment carrying the dish, with the chilli and sugar playing a supporting part.