I know questions have been asked like this about Italy and European countries before but I'm specifically interested in Thailand here, or at least ethnic Tai cuisine including Laos, Shan, maybe Chinese Dai.
I've been told that long pepper was used instead. Any truth to that? I've also heard that "royal cuisine" in Thailand is pre-Columbian but I don't know the truth of that claim.
Before the chili’s came over in the 1600s, Thai cuisine used various spices such as peppercorns , ginger and galangal .
Originally, Thai food was prepared in two ways. Either stewed and then baked or grilling. This changed though with Chinese settlement some 1,400 years ago which brought stir-frying and deep-frying . These styles created some of the classic Thai foods Pad Thai and Khao Pad, fried noodles and rice respectively.
Of course, foods in different areas were all differently influenced. The North took influences from nearby Burma and tends to be milder than the rest of the country along with more use of sticky rice.
The northeast is right by Laos and as a result has a lot more spices. Fish and shrimp are more commonly used though due to historic shortages of meat in the area.
The central area is home to Thai royal cuisine. This complex style of preparing and displaying food is almost considered an art form . Jasmin rice is also preferred over sticky rice in this region.
The southern region has some very unique food techniques compared to the other regions. Coconut milk is used to fry instead of Ghee (clarified butter). Coconut flesh is also used as a standard condiment. Cashews are also commonly used in appetizers.
You can crosspost this question to r/AskFoodHistorians/
There are a few pieces of writings from foreign traders and diplomats from 17th-century Ayutthaya which paint a picture of the lives of people. Unfortunately, contemporary local records are scarce, so Thai scholars also rely quite extensively from these foreign accounts. In particular, these two are ones that I can find at the moment: Description of the Kingdom of Siam (1636) from Dutch trader Jeremias van Vliet and The Kingdom of Siam (1691) from Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat who led a mission to Siam in 1687.
From these accounts, it seems that Siamese diet mainly consists of rice, fish, seafood-based condiments, peppers, herbs, and fruits. They also note that despite fertile land and relative abundance of food products, the people tend not to eat excessively and the food was relatively simple. For example, van Vliet wrote
They are not excessive with their food, but usually only take ordinary rice, dried as well as fresh and salt fish and vegetables. As sauce or dessert they take bladsjan (prepared of shrimps, crabs, mussels and fish mixed with some pepper and salt), fish and pepper sauce, which has a very bad small, but which they find delicious.
Thai translator refers to bladsjan in van Vliet's book as pla chom which is a type of fermented fish.
Similarly, la Loubère wrote that the usual food for the Siamese is rice and (sea and freshwater) fish, although he noted that they did not really care for fresh fish.
La Table des Siamois n'est pas somptüeuse: comme nous mangeons moins en esté qu'en hyver, ils mangent moins que nous, à cause de l'esté continuel, dans lequel ils vivent: leur nourriture ordinaire est le ris, & le poisson. La mer leur donne de petites huîtres tres délicates, de tres-bonnes petites tortuës, des écrevices de toute taille, & d'excellens poissons, dont les especes nous sont inconnuës. Leur riviere est aussi fort poissonneuse, & nourrit principalement de belles & bonnes anguilles. Mais ils font peu de cas du poisson frais.
[...]
Un Siamois fait assez bonne chere avec une livre de ris par jour, qui ne revient au plus qu'a un liard, & avec un peu de poisson sec, ou salé, qui ne coûte pas davantage.
La Loubère also mentioned some ingredients by name. The sauces here may refer to nam phrik, which nowadays usually contain some sort of chilli. He also mentioned kapi or shrimp paste and turmeric.
Leurs sauces sont simples, un peu d'eau avcec des épices, de l'ail, de la ciboule, ou quelque petite herbe de bonne odeur, comme le baume. Ils aiment fort une sauce liquide comme de la moutarde, qui n'est que de petites écrevisses pourries parce qu'elles sont mal salées: ils l'appellent capì. [...]
Ce qui leur tient lieu de safran est une racine, qui en a le goût, & la couleur, quand elle est séche & mise en poudre: la Plante en est connuë sous le nom de Crocus Indicus. Ils estiment fort sain pour leurs enfans de leur en jaunir le corps & le visage: si bien que dans les ruës on ne voit que des enfants, qui ont le teint jaune.
Lastly, I would like to mention a lexical quirk in modern Thai. Chilli is called phrik in Thai, whereas pepper is called phrik thai. This Thai qualifier is the opposite of the usual pattern in which plants introduced by Europeans tend to be named after a similar existing plant with the suffix for "foreign", like tomato is named after local types of aubergine. This may be suggestive of what sort of displacement occurred in Thai culinary practice.
Sources:
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