The Portuguese egg sweets (foi thong, thong yip, thong yot)

The egg-yolk sweets of the Thai table descend from the Portuguese confectionery brought to Siam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Portuguese traders, soldiers and missionaries settled at Ayutthaya. Thai tradition credits Marie Guyomar de Pinha, known in Thai as Thao Thong Kip Ma, a woman of Portuguese descent in the court kitchens of the late Ayutthaya period, with establishing these sweets in the palace. David Thompson, in Thai Food, places them among the foreign confections absorbed into the royal repertoire.

Foi thong (golden threads), thong yip (pinched gold) and thong yot (gold drops) share one principle: egg yolk set in hot sugar syrup. The Portuguese convent kitchens of the Iberian peninsula used the same ingredients, egg yolks and sugar, in fios de ovos, ovos moles and similar sweets. The method crossed the sea intact, and what changed was the setting in which it was served. In Thai hands the syrup was scented with jasmine-perfumed water, and the sweets were made in the palace for ceremonies and for gifts. Foi thong is made by trickling yolk through a small perforated cone or funnel into simmering syrup, where it sets into fine strands that are lifted out, drained and folded into skeins. Thong yip is a small portion of yolk poached in syrup and shaped into a pinched flower, while thong yot is a rounded drop of yolk, often enriched with a little rice flour, cooked in the same syrup. The syrup is the whole of the craft. It must be kept at a steady, gentle simmer and of the right density, so that the yolk cooks through without toughening or breaking apart, and the sweets come out glossy and tender. The yolks are strained beforehand to remove the germinal thread and any membrane, which would cloud the syrup and mar the colour. These sweets became part of the set of auspicious desserts served at weddings, ordinations and other formal occasions, because gold and the word thong stand for prosperity. They are the clearest case in Thai cooking of a foreign technique received at court, renamed and given a ritual meaning that its origin did not carry. They also show how a cuisine takes in an outside idea: the Portuguese gave the method, and the Thai kitchen gave it the perfumed syrup, the names and the occasions on which it is served.

These sweets are intensely sweet and rich, with the soft savour of cooked yolk carried by a syrup scented with jasmine. They are eaten in small portions, usually with unsweetened tea, and appear on the table among other formal desserts rather than as a single closing course.