Royal Thai Cuisine: Palace Cooking, Carving and Refinement

Thai food has a reputation for being bold, but there is another side to it that is just as old: quiet, careful and exacting. In Thai this is called ahan chao wang, food of the palace, and it describes the style of cooking that developed in the royal and aristocratic households of Bangkok.

Royal Thai cuisine is less a fixed set of recipes than an approach. The ingredients are often the same as in ordinary central Thai cooking. What changes is the care taken over every stage, from how a fish is boned to how a cucumber is cut, and the balance of flavours on the plate.

The palace kitchens

Bangkok became the capital in 1782, and the royal court of the new city became a centre of arts, crafts and cooking. Within the Grand Palace, the Inner Court was home to royal women and their attendants, and it was here that much of the palace cooking was done and taught.

Families of noble and well-connected households often sent daughters to serve in the palace or in the residences of princes and princesses, where they learned cooking, flower arranging, carving and other refined skills. When they married or returned home, they carried those skills out into the wider city. This is generally seen as one of the main ways palace cooking spread into the food of Bangkok's better-off households, and from there into central Thai cooking as a whole.

The court also had a literary interest in food. A well-known set of boat-procession verses praising savoury dishes and sweets is traditionally attributed to King Rama II, who reigned in the early nineteenth century. The poems describe dishes such as massaman curry and ma hor, and they are often quoted as evidence of what was eaten at court at the time.

What makes it royal

A few principles run through palace-style cooking. None of them is unique to the court, but together they give it a recognisable character:

• Nothing awkward to eat. Fish and meat are boned, prawns are peeled, fruit is peeled and seeded, and everything is cut to a size that can be eaten neatly with a spoon and fork.
• Balance over impact. Flavours are rounded and harmonious, with chilli used for fragrance and warmth rather than to overwhelm.
• Labour as a sign of care. Pastes are pounded very fine, coconut cream is pressed fresh and garnishes are shaped by hand.
• Beauty on the plate. Food is arranged with colour and symmetry in mind, often with carved fruit or vegetables and flowers.
• Many small dishes. A meal is a spread of contrasting dishes rather than a single plate, so that sour, salty, sweet and rich sit side by side.

Kae sa lak: the art of carving

The most visible craft associated with palace cooking is kae sa lak, the carving of fruit and vegetables. Using a small knife with a fine, pointed blade, carvers turn watermelons into roses and lotus flowers, cucumbers into leaves, chillies into blossoms and spring onions into curling tassels.

Thai tradition links the craft with the royal court, and a popular legend ties it to the early kingdom of Sukhothai, centuries before Bangkok. The legend is impossible to verify, but carving was clearly cultivated as an accomplishment among court women in the Bangkok period, and it is still taught in Thai schools, colleges and cookery courses today.

Carving is not just decoration. A carved shallot or cucumber is usually there to be eaten alongside the meal, and the carving makes even a plate of raw vegetables look generous.

Khao chae: cool rice for the hot season

Khao chae, rice soaked in cool water, is the dish most closely tied to the palace in Thai minds. Cooked rice is rinsed until it is no longer sticky, then served in water scented with jasmine flowers and other blossoms, sometimes with ice. It is eaten in the hottest months, around March and April.

The rice is only half of it. Khao chae comes with a set of small, richly flavoured side dishes, taken a bite at a time between spoonfuls of cool rice. These typically include:

• Luk kapi, balls of shrimp paste mixed with fish and aromatics, battered and fried.
• Stuffed shallots, filled with fish or shrimp paste and deep-fried in a light egg batter.
• Stuffed mild chillies, filled with minced pork and wrapped in a net of egg.
• Sweet shredded beef or pork, fried until dry and candied.
• Sweet salted radish, stir-fried with egg and palm sugar.

The dish is generally said to have Mon origins and to have been adopted at court during the nineteenth century, before spreading to the wider public. Phetchaburi, south-west of Bangkok, is also well known for its own khao chae.

Ma hor, cho muang and other court dishes

Ma hor, whose name means galloping horses, is a small, elegant snack: pieces of fresh pineapple or orange topped with a sweet, savoury mixture of minced pork, prawns, peanuts, palm sugar, garlic and fried shallots, finished with a coriander leaf and a sliver of red chilli. The contrast of juicy, sour fruit and rich, sticky topping is classic palace cooking.

Cho muang are steamed dumplings shaped like small flowers and tinted violet, traditionally with butterfly pea flower. The dough is pinched into petals with fine tweezers, and the filling is a sweet and savoury mixture of minced chicken or pork with onion and pepper. They take patience to make, which is precisely the point.

Other dishes often linked to the court include delicate coconut cream dips known as lon, served with fresh vegetables, and many of the most elaborate Thai sweets. Whether a given dish was invented in the palace or simply refined there is often not known, so it is safest to think of these as dishes the court made its own.

From the palace to the restaurant

Palace cooking did not stay behind palace walls. One of the first printed Thai cookbooks, published by a noblewoman in the early twentieth century, helped bring refined household cooking to a wider readership. Cookery schools and domestic science colleges continued the work, and carving and court-style dishes became part of formal Thai culinary training.

Its influence is easy to see today. Upmarket Thai restaurants in Bangkok and abroad often describe their menus as royal Thai cuisine, serving boneless, bite-sized dishes in many small portions, with carved vegetables on the plate. The Thai food served in hotels and international restaurants owes a good deal to this style, sometimes more than to the street.

The everyday food of Thailand and the food of the palace are not opposites. They share ingredients, techniques and a love of balance. Royal Thai cuisine simply takes the same ideas and gives them all the time in the world.