claimed to have been a 120-year-old recipe Pad thai was originally called
kuai tiao pad thai, but this was later shortened to simply
pad thai.
Kuai tiao () is a Thai borrowing from the
Teochew word
guê2 diao5 (), which means a type of thick Chinese
rice noodle also known as
shahe fen. The word
kuai tiao has cognates in several other Southeast Asian countries where Chinese immigrants settled; with
kuyteav in
Cambodia,
hủ tiếu in Vietnam, and
kway teow in Malaysia and Singapore being analogues. Although stir-fried rice noodles were introduced to Thailand from
China centuries ago, the dish
pad thai was invented in the mid-20th century. American author Mark Padoongpatt maintains that pad thai is "...not this traditional, authentic, going back hundreds of years dish. It was actually created in the 1930s in Thailand. The dish was created because Thailand was focused on nation-building. The commonly held explanation of pad thai's provenance is that during
World War II, Thailand suffered a rice shortage due to the war and floods. To reduce domestic rice consumption, the
Thai government under Prime Minister
Plaek Phibunsongkhram promoted consumption of noodles instead. His government promoted rice noodles and helped to establish the
modern identity of Thailand. Another explanation by Thai-American food writer
Kasma Loha-unchit suggests that pad thai was invented by the
Thai Chinese immigrants, because "for a dish to be so named in its own country clearly suggests an origin that isn't Thai". Noodle cookery in most Southeast Asian countries was introduced by the wave of immigrants from southern China settling in the region the past century. Loha-unchit states that the
ethnic Chinese of Thailand were aware that "Central Thai people were very fond of the combination of hot, sour, sweet and salty flavors, they added these to their stir-fried noodle dishes and gave it a fusion name, much like Western chefs today are naming their dishes Thai this or Thai that on their East-West menus." At least as early as 2001, the Thai government used pad thai as a form of "
soft power", creating "the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd., in an effort to establish at least 3,000 Thai restaurants worldwide." The plan included numerous government agencies and resulted in nearly tripling the number of Thai restaurants globally in seventeen years. ==Ingredients==