page_title: Thai cuisine
section_title: Historical influences
hierarchical_section_title: Thai cuisine / History / Historical influences
caption_attribution_description: English: Thai vegetable carving, here using pumpkin.
context_page_description: Thai cuisine is the national cuisine of Thailand.
  Thai cooking places emphasis on lightly prepared dishes with strong aromatic components and a spicy edge. Thai chef McDang characterises Thai food as demonstrating "intricacy; attention to detail; texture; color; taste; and the use of ingredients with medicinal benefits, as well as good flavor", as well as care being given to the food's appearance, smell and context. Australian chef David Thompson, an expert on Thai food, observes that unlike many other cuisines, Thai cooking is "about the juggling of disparate elements to create a harmonious finish. Like a complex musical chord it's got to have a smooth surface but it doesn't matter what's happening underneath. Simplicity isn't the dictum here, at all."
  Traditional Thai cuisine loosely falls into four categories: tom, yam, tam, and gaeng. Deep-fries, stir-fries, and steamed dishes derive from Chinese cooking.
  In 2017, seven Thai dishes appeared on a list of the "World's 50 Best Foods"—an online poll of 35,000 people worldwide by CNN Travel. Thailand had more dishes on the list than any other country.
context_section_description: Thai cuisine and the culinary traditions and cuisines of Thailand's neighbors have mutually influenced one another over the course of many centuries.
  According to the Thai monk Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikku's writing, ‘India's Benevolence to Thailand’, Thai cuisine was influenced by Indian cuisine. He wrote that Thai people learned how to use spices in their food in various ways from Indians. Thais also obtained the methods of making herbal medicines from the Indians. Some plants like sarabhi of the family Guttiferae, panika or harsinghar, phikun or Mimusops elengi and bunnak or the rose chestnut etc. were brought from India.
  Many dishes that are now popular in Thailand were originally Chinese dishes. They were introduced to Thailand by the Hokkien people starting in the 15th century, and by the Teochew people who started settling in larger numbers from the late–18th century onward, mainly in the towns and cities, and now form the majority of Thai Chinese. Such dishes include chok (Thai: โจ๊ก), rice porridge; salapao (steamed buns); kuaitiao rat na (fried rice-noodles); and khao kha mu (stewed pork with rice). The Chinese also introduced the use of the wok for cooking, the technique of deep-frying and stir frying dishes, several types of noodles, taochiao (fermented bean paste), soy sauces, and tofu. The cuisines of India and Persia, brought first by traders, and later settlers from these regions, with their use of dried spices, gave rise to Thai adaptations and dishes such as kaeng kari (yellow curry) and kaeng matsaman (massaman curry).
  Western influences, starting in 1511 when the first diplomatic mission from the Portuguese arrived at the court of Ayutthaya, have created dishes such as foi thong, the Thai adaptation of the Portuguese fios de ovos, and sangkhaya, where coconut milk replaces cow's milk in making a custard. These dishes were said to have been brought to Thailand in the 17th century by Maria Guyomar de Pinha, a woman of mixed Japanese-Portuguese-Bengali ancestry who was born in Ayutthaya, and became the wife of Constantine Phaulkon, a Greek adviser to King Narai. The most notable influence from the West must be the introduction of the chili pepper from the Americas in the 16th or 17th century. It, and rice, are now two of the most important ingredients in Thai cuisine. During the Columbian Exchange, Portuguese and Spanish ships brought new foodstuffs from the Americas including tomatoes, corn, papaya, pea eggplants, pineapple, pumpkins, culantro, cashews, and peanuts.
caption: The art of vegetable carving is thought to have originated in the Sukhothai Kingdom nearly 700 years ago.[5]
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