Sauces

Appears in
The Original Thai Cookbook
The Original Thai Cookbook

By Jennifer Brennan

Published 1981

  • About

Epicurean cooks

Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite

William Shakespeare

Nam Prik sauce is the universal favorite of the Thai people through all strata of society. It is one of the ancient, traditional dishes of the country, records indicating that it was probably eaten in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dining the Sukhothai period. At that time it was likely that Nam Prik was made with peppercorns, not chillies.

M. R. Kukrit Pramoj, a former Prime Minister of Thailand; and for several years, my next door neighbor, and a leading culinary expert, avers that chillies were introduced to Thailand around the sixteenth century. It is probable, therefore, that the Thai depended on the indigenous black peppercorns for “bite” in their sauce.