Sauces and Relishes (with a note on MSG)

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By Phia Sing

Published 1981

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The Lao word for a sauce is jaew. That, at least, is one way of representing it in English characters. It is a particularly intractable word for transliteration, and may appear as tchéo or jéo or in kindred forms.

Phia Sing often says at the end of a recipe what sauce should accompany the dish. The sauce is often an uncooked mixture, which we would be just as likely to call a relish or a dressing. Phia Sing gives recipes for Jaew Som Mak Nao and for Jaew Bong, but otherwise assumes that readers will know how to prepare the sauces. All those to which he simply alludes in this way are explained below.