The Cremation Volume as a Cookbook

The cremation volume, known in Thai as nangsue ngan phra ratchathan phloeng sop or, more briefly, nangsue ngan sop, belongs to the funerary customs of the Thai court and, in time, of the educated households of Bangkok. At a cremation the family of the deceased gave printed books to those who attended, and the contents were chosen to honour the dead and to be of lasting use to the guests. David Thompson, in Thai Food, draws on several of these volumes as a principal source for the older cooking of the central plains, and he treats them as documents of the palace and of the great houses rather than of the street.

A cremation volume might contain a biography, a sermon, a collection of verse or a treatise on a craft, and in a number of cases the family chose cookery. The reasoning was that a recipe collection preserved something of the household of the deceased, particularly where the dead had been a woman who ran a kitchen or a person renowned for hospitality. The recipes were therefore not written for the market. They were the dishes of a particular table, set down by or for the cooks who had served it, and they carry the proportions and preferences of that house. Thompson's reliance on this literature is explicit. In Thai Food he describes the central Thai repertoire as one shaped by the palace kitchens, and he turns to the old printed books, among them the work associated with Thanpuying Plian Passakornrawong, for the standard of that cooking. Her collection is the best-known example of a cookery text that reached a wide readership through the funerary tradition and the printing that followed it. The royal recipe verses attributed to King Rama II sit in the same stream, since they record the dishes of the court in a form that was meant to be recited and remembered as much as cooked from. The nature of these books explains both their value and their difficulty. The recipes are terse, assume a trained hand, and seldom give weights, times or the heat of the fire. A cook reading them was expected to know what a dish should taste like and to supply the method from experience. Thompson's own task, as he presents it, is to read behind the text: to test the balance of salt, sour, sweet and heat against the description of the finished dish, and to restore the technique that the original author took for granted. The cremation volume is thus best used as a statement of intention, an account of what the dish was meant to be, and not as a procedure to be followed to the letter. The books also fix vocabulary and reveal how the cooking changed. They show the refinement expected at court, the careful carving, the fragrant smoking of sweets with candle and flower, and the delicate curries and relishes served with rice. Where later cookbooks adjust a dish to the available ingredients, the older volumes record it before the adjustment, and a cook comparing the two can see what has been simplified or lost. For this reason the funerary books remain a primary reference for anyone who wishes to understand the central Thai table as it was understood by those who set it.

The recipes in these volumes aim at the balance of salt, sour, sweet and heat that defines central Thai cooking, with a refinement of aroma and a restraint of chilli that mark the palace table. Thompson reads them for that balance, and a cook who tastes against it will understand the intention of the text where its measures are silent.