What does flavour feel like? This Thai recipe book uses hand-ripped collage and vivid pigments to figure it out

We see illustrated food every day, there’s sometimes nothing more fun than a drawing of a childhood meal, a sentimental soup, bizarre fusion foods…even Studio Trikken have recently created an art book all about the humble banana. But seldom seen is the visual representation of how it feels to eat these foods. How do you capture taste, memory, the explosion of senses when eating? Norway-based illustrator Sveinung Sudbø (AKA Originalkopi) has set out to recreate those unique experiences visually in his Thai recipe book Bang Cook Book, created in collaboration with graphic designer Julie Elise Hauge.

“When I sat down at restaurants in Thailand, digging into the dishes, I drew between bites and tried to stay present while eating. I had my sketchbook and a set of aquarelle pastels and sketched down what came to mind, focusing on the sensations each dish gave me,” says Sveinung. “I tried to translate sensations into the visuals I associated with them – and that could vary from dish to dish. So although I developed a kind of visual language for taste during the trip, it was also very much tied to what I felt in each moment.” Sveinung knew that sketching needed to be quick and expressive to capture the fleeting moments of taste – the aquarelle pastels could cover large areas with bright colours and emulate textures quickly. For the final illustrations, Sveinung chose collage as the primary method because “it has some of the same qualities as cooking a dish – you start with each element individually, then layer them, and mix them together, and the result becomes stronger than its individual parts.”

Through the organised chaos of collage, Sveinung also pays tribute to Thai culture in general, but not by simply mapping flavour profiles but bringing them to vivid life through vibrant pigments and saturated spectrums of colour, with each component of the collages feeling unique and complicated. “The restaurants were often out in the street, with colours, smells and sounds all around you, which set your senses in high gear,” says Sveinung, who purposefully avoided looking to Thai visual art for reference, choosing to rely on personal experiences with Thai to lead the visuals to somewhere truthful. The results of these swirling sensations become almost camo-like, sometimes kaleidoscopic, other times quieter.

Finding inspiration in Matisse’s cut-outs, Sveinung tore and cut paper himself to give everything a handmade texture that was important for communicating the sensations that only humans can recreate artistically. See, Sveinung had a realisation over his creative career – drawing the appearance of food on a plate didn’t capture the most exciting part of the dish, in his opinion, it was about how flavour feels. This led the illustrator to Thai food, which is known for its deep and complex flavours. A simple sausage roll could’ve done the trick, but instead Bang Cook Book is filled with complicated compositions that pop off the page much like food smells or explodes on the taste buds.