Robert May’s Roast Turkey (1660): Basting, Saucing, Baking & Carving a Feast Bird
A clove-studded roast turkey in the Tudor style, served with citrus, herbs, and bread sippets. Adapted from Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660).
This month, we’re setting the table for a different kind of Thanksgiving — one with a Tudor and Stuart flavor. From Robert May’s 1660 “Accomplisht Cook” to earlier Tudor household manuals, we’ll explore how roast birds, herb puddings, and fruit-studded pies once filled English Christmas and winter feasts. Each recipe has been adapted for a modern kitchen — perfect for cooks who want to bring a little early modern elegance to their Thanksgiving table.
When we think of “traditional” holiday turkey, most of us picture a very modern table. But by the time The Accomplisht Cook was printed in 1660, Robert May already had a fully developed system for roasting, basting, saucing, baking, and even carving great birds like turkey, bustard, and peacock. This post gathers several of his turkey-adjacent passages into one place and offers a modern redaction you can actually put on a holiday table.
Historical Note: The Birds of Robert May’s Table
Turkey: Native to the Americas, turkeys were introduced to England in the early 1500s through Spanish and English trade with the New World. By the reign of Henry VIII they were already fashionable; by the late Tudor period, they regularly appeared at Christmas feasts, often replacing peacock or swan as the grand centerpiece.
Bustard: The great bustard (Otis tarda) was a huge wild game bird native to southern England and the open downs. Weighing up to 30 pounds, it was prized for its rich meat and rarity. Overhunting led to its extinction in Britain by the early 19th century (though reintroduction efforts have since succeeded on Salisbury Plain). In May’s time, serving a bustard was a display of elite access to rare game — the Restoration equivalent of a trophy roast.
Peacock & Swan: These older medieval showpieces were still occasionally served, but more often preserved in decorative pies or replaced with turkey and goose for practicality.
Capons, Pheasants, and Partridges: These smaller birds filled the secondary places on the table, roasted or baked in pairs for symmetry, often “larded” with bacon for richness and shine.
Of Fatting Turkies (Robert May, 1660)
For the fatting of turkies sodden barley is excellent, or sodden oats for the first fortnight, and then for another fortnight cram them in all sorts as you cram your capon, and they will be fat beyond measure. ... Their eggs are exceeding wholesome to eat, and restore nature decayed wonderfully.
Context: May’s note shows how recently turkeys had joined English barnyards. Introduced from the New World just a century earlier, they were still treated as curiosities worth special care. His method—first feeding boiled grain, then hand-cramming like capons—was meant to produce the rich, buttery birds served at Christmas.
The mention of “restoring nature decayed” reflects period belief in food as medicine: turkey eggs were considered strengthening for the elderly or convalescent.
Historical Note: Of course, the Tudors and Stuarts did not celebrate Thanksgiving as we do in America today. This series simply imagines how dishes from their winter feasts — from Robert May’s 1660 Accomplisht Cook to earlier Tudor cookbooks — might have found their way, in spirit and flavor, to the modern table. It’s a chance to explore the shared themes of gratitude, abundance, and seasonal celebration across centuries.
Think of this as an early modern English answer to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner: a roast turkey, richly basted, brightly sauced, optionally baked in pastry, and carved at table as a piece of performance art.
Robert May and the Seventeenth-Century Christmas Table
Robert May (1588–1664) worked in both English and French-influenced kitchens, and his Accomplisht Cook sits at the turning point between late Tudor/early Stuart foodways and the Restoration court. His famous “Bill of Fare for Christmas Day” shows just how lavish a noble household’s table could be, and it’s one of the earliest English Christmas menus that features turkey alongside swan, venison, and minced pies.
A Bill of Fare for Christmas Day (Robert May, 1660)
From The Accomplisht Cook — A 17th-century Christmas table as it might have been set in a great English household, featuring the first and second courses for one “mess.”
First Course
- Oysters.
- A collar of brawn.
- Stewed broth of mutton marrow-bones.
- A grand sallet.
- A pottage of caponets.
- A breast of veal in stoffado.
- A boil’d partridge.
- A chine of beef, or surloin roast.
- Minced pies.
- A jegote of mutton with anchovy sauce.
- A made dish of sweet-bread.
- A swan roast.
- A pasty of venison.
- A kid with a pudding in his belly.
- A steak pie.
- A hanch of venison roasted.
- A turkey roast and stuck with cloves.
- A made dish of chickens in puff paste.
- Two bran geese roasted, one larded.
- Two large capons, one larded.
- A custard.
Second Course
Oranges and Lemons.
- A young lamb or kid.
- Two couple of rabbits, two larded.
- A pig souc’t with tongues.
- Three ducks, one larded.
- Three pheasants, one larded.
- A swan pye.
- Three brace of partridge, three larded.
- A made dish in puff paste.
- Bologna sausages, anchovies, mushrooms, caviare, and pickled oysters in a dish.
- Six teels, three larded.
- A gammon of Westphalia bacon.
- Ten plovers, five larded.
- A quince pye or warden pie.
- Six woodcocks, three larded.
- A standing tart in puff-paste with preserved fruits and pippins.
- A dish of larks.
- Six dried neats’ tongues.
- Sturgeon.
- Powdered geese.
- Jellies.
Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660): A Christmas Day bill of fare featuring roast turkey “stuck with cloves”.
Within this world, turkey is both fashionable and firmly embedded in the performance of a winter feast. May then shows us in detail how to baste it, sauce it, bake it, and even how to carve it in front of the company.
Divers Bastings for Roast Meats
Before we ever get to the carving knife, May begins with the art of basting. His “divers bastings” turn a plain roast into something scented, glazed, and showy.
Divers Bastings for roast Meats.
1. Fresh butter.
2. Clarified suet.
3. Claret wine, with a bundle of sage, rosemary, tyme, and parsley, baste the mutton with these herbs and wine.
4. Water and salt.
5. Cream and melted butter, thus flay’d pigs commonly.
6. Yolks of eggs, juyce of oranges and biskets, the meat being almost rosted, comfits for some fine large fowls, as a peacock, bustard, or turkey.
In modern terms:
- Butter or clarified suet give a rich, golden, crisp skin.
- Claret wine and herbs add aroma and colour, especially good on mutton or stronger meats.
- Cream and butter make a delicate pale glaze for roast pig.
- Egg yolks, orange juice, and crushed biscuits form a sweet, glossy crust for grand birds, finished with comfits scattered over the top.
Historical Note: What Was “Claret Wine”?
In the seventeenth century, claret referred broadly to light red wines imported from Bordeaux and Gascony — the word itself comes from the French vin claret, meaning “clear wine.” Early clarets were pale, almost rosé-like, because they were fermented briefly on the grape skins and shipped young. By Robert May’s day, claret had deepened in color but was still lighter and sharper than modern Bordeaux blends.
Modern Substitute: Use a medium-bodied dry red wine such as a Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or Côtes du Rhône. For recipes that emphasize freshness (like bastings or sauces), a Pinot Noir or red table wine works beautifully. Avoid sweet or heavy fortified wines — May’s claret would have been tart and food-friendly, not rich or syrupy.
Historical Note: What Was “Bisket”?
In early modern English cookery, a bisket (or “bisket bread”) meant any hard, twice-baked bread — the word comes from the French biscuit, literally “twice cooked.” There were two main types:
• Hard Bisket: a plain, crisp rusk used for travel or shipboard rations (like naval hardtack).
• Fine or Musked Bisket: a delicate, sweetened version flavored with sugar, rosewater, musk, and sometimes anise or caraway seeds. These were the precursors to our modern ladyfingers and biscotti.
When May calls for “biskets” to be crushed into a sauce or basting (as in his egg yolks, juyce of oranges and biskets glaze), he’s referring to the fine sweet type — a dry sponge or rusk used to thicken or sweeten a mixture, not the savory ship’s biscuit.
Modern Substitute: Use crushed ladyfingers, biscotti, or dried sponge cake crumbs for sweet dishes. For savory sauces, plain melba toast or water crackers will approximate the texture and mild flavor of historical bisket bread.
For a modern turkey inspired by May, a simple claret-and-herb baste during roasting, followed by an optional egg-and-orange glaze near the end, is both period-plausible and achievable in a home kitchen.
Sauces for Roast Land-Fowl
May then turns to sauces, many of them built on bread, onions, citrus, nuts, and fruit. These are mainly intended for turkey, bustard, peacock, pheasant, partridge, and other land-fowl.
Sauces for all manner of roast Land-Fowl, as Turkey, Bustard, Peacock, Pheasant, Partridge, &c.
1. Slic’t onions being boil’d, stew them in some water, salt, pepper, some grated bread, and the gravy of the fowl.
2. Take slices of white-bread and boil them in fair water with two whole onions, some gravy, half a grated nutmeg, and a little salt; strain them together through a strainer, and boil it up as thick as water grewel; then add to it the yolks of two eggs dissolved with the juyce of two oranges, &c.
3. Take thin slices of manchet, a little of the fowl, some sweet butter, grated nutmeg, pepper, and salt; stew all together, and being stewed, put in a lemon minced with the peel.
4. Onions slic’t and boil’d in fair water, and a little salt, a few bread crumbs beaten, pepper, nutmeg, three spoonful of white wine, and some lemon-peel finely minced, and boil’d all together: being almost boil’d put in the juyce of an orange, beaten butter, and the gravy of the fowl.
5. Stamp small nuts to a paste, with bread, nutmeg, pepper, saffron, cloves, juyce of orange, and strong broth, strain and boil them together pretty thick.
6. Quince, prunes, currans, and raisins, boil’d, muskefied bisket stamped and strained with white wine, rose vinegar, nutmeg, cinamon, cloves, juyce of oranges and sugar, and boil it not too thick.
7. Boil carrots and quinces, strain them with rose vinegar, and verjuyce, sugar, cinamon, pepper, and nutmeg, boil’d with a few whole cloves, and a little musk.
8. Take a manchet, pare off the crust and slice it, then boil it in fair water, and being boil’d some what thick put in some white wine, wine vinegar, rose, or elder vinegar, some sugar and butter, &c.
9. Almond-paste and crumbs of manchet, stamp them together with some sugar, ginger, and salt, strain them with grape-verjuyce, and juyce of oranges; boil it pretty thick.
There is a whole post lurking in these nine sauces alone, but for our turkey we can simplify to one or two options:
- A simple onion and bread sauce enriched with nutmeg, butter, and a splash of white wine (nos. 1–2, 4).
- A **citrus bread sauce** with egg yolks and orange or lemon juice (no. 2), which feels especially festive.
- An almond and verjuice sauce for a more luxurious, almost gravy-like accompaniment (no. 9).
A Green Boil’d Pudding of Sweet Herbs
May also gives us a green boiled pudding that he explicitly recommends as a stuffing or side for roast poultry, kid, lamb, or veal. It functions very much like a rich, herbal “stuffing pudding”.
To make a green boil’d Pudding of sweet Herbs.
Take and steep a penny white loaf in a quart of cream and only eight yolks of eggs, some currans, sugar, cloves, beaten mace, dates, juyce of spinage, saffron, cinamon, nutmeg, sweet marjoram, tyme, savory, peniroyal minced very small, and some salt, boil it in beef-suet, marrow, (or none.) These puddings are excellent for stuffings of roast or boil’d Poultrey, Kid, Lamb, or Turkey, Veal, or Breasts of Mutton.
For a modern table, this could be adapted as a savoury-herbal bread pudding baked in a dish or used to stuff a turkey loosely in the cavity (mind your food-safety timings).
To Bake a Turkey (for Hot or Cold Service)
At last we come to the baked turkey itself. May’s version is technically a baked pie — the bird boned, larded, heavily seasoned, and sealed in pastry and butter. He offers both a cold, preserved version, and a hot, freshly sauced one.
To bake Turkey, Chicken, Pea-Chicken, Pheasant-Pouts, Heath Pouts, Caponets, or Partridge for to be eaten cold.
Take a turkey-chicken, bone it, and lard it with pretty big lard, a pound and half will serve, then season it with an ounce of pepper, an ounce of nutmegs, and two ounces of salt, lay some butter in the bottom of the pye, then lay on the fowl, and put in it six or eight whole cloves, then put on all the seasoning with good store of butter, close it up, and baste it over with eggs, bake it, and being baked fill it up with clarified butter.
Thus you may bake them for to be eaten hot, giving them but half the seasoning, and liquor it with gravy and juyce of orange.
Bake this pye in fine paste; for more variety you may make a stuffing for it as followeth; mince some beef-suet and a little veal very fine, some sweet herbs, grated nutmeg, pepper, salt, two or three raw yolks of eggs, some boil’d skirrets or pieces of artichocks, grapes, or gooseberries, &c.
For most of us, a whole boned turkey baked in a giant pie is a little ambitious on a weeknight; but the flavour profile and saucing adapt beautifully to a more familiar roast.
