Pumpion Pie (1658 & 1670) — The Earliest English Pumpkin Pie from The Compleat Cook and The Queen-Like Closet

England’s earliest spiced pumpkin pies: 1658 & 1670 English “pumpion” pies layered with apples or scented with sack and rosewater—two period versions, two modern bakes.

Pumpion Pie (1658 & 1670) — The Compleat Cook & The Queen-Like Closet

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Part of the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series — Early modern English cooks balanced spice, fruit, and rich sauces to delight feast guests. In that spirit, we imagine how 17th-century dishes—roasts, puddings, and pies—might grace today’s Thanksgiving table with historical flavor and good cheer.

A Pie of Pumpion and Apple — England’s First Pumpkin Pies

By the mid-1600s, New World “pumpions” (pumpkins) found a home in English kitchens. Two of the earliest printed examples—The Compleat Cook (1658) and Hannah Woolley’s The Queen-Like Closet (1670)—reveal different approaches: one layers herbed pumpkin fritters with sliced apples and currants, finished with a wine-egg caudle; the other stews and mashes the pumpkin, perfumes it with rosewater and sack, and glazes it with a sweet caudle. Together, they prefigure the later Anglo-American pumpkin custard pie while retaining a distinctly Restoration palate.

Historical Context: The Journey of the Pumpkin

From the New World to the Old: Pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo) are among the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas, domesticated in Mexico around 7000–5500 BCE. By the 15th century they were a staple from South America to New England. Spanish and Portuguese explorers carried seeds home in the early 1500s, where the “Indian gourd” quickly took root in Iberian and Italian gardens.

Arrival in England: The word pompion (later spelled pumpion or pumpkin) entered English by 1548, from French pompon and ultimately Latin peponem, “melon.” William Turner’s Herbal (1551–68) lists the pompion among familiar garden plants, and John Gerard’s Herbal (1597) describes “the great round pompion,” judging it “cold and moist in the second degree.” English cooks viewed it as a vegetable requiring the balancing warmth of spice, wine, and butter.

Early English Recipes: By the mid-1600s, the pumpkin had moved from curiosity to kitchen. The herbed, apple-layered pie in The Compleat Cook (1658) and Hannah Woolley’s sweeter rosewater version in The Queen-Like Closet (1670) mark its first recorded uses in English cookery. Both reflect a transitional taste—part vegetable fritter, part custard pie—infused with the season’s abundance of spice.

Across the Atlantic Again: English colonists in New England found pumpkins thriving in Indigenous fields and adopted them eagerly. By the late 17th century, colonial cooks abandoned herbs and apples for smooth spiced custards, giving rise to the pumpkin pie of early American tradition, immortalized in Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery (1796).

Date	Event	Location
~7000 BCE	Pumpkins domesticated	Mesoamerica
Early 1500s	Introduced to Europe by Spanish explorers	Iberia
1536	Described in Mattioli’s Commentarii	Italy
1548	First English record of “pompion”	England
1597	Gerard’s Herbal notes “great round pompion”	England
1658	The Compleat Cook publishes “Pumpion Pie”	London
1670	Hannah Woolley’s Queen-Like Closet	London
1796	Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery	United States

Humoral Insight: Early modern physicians classified pumpkins as “cold and moist.” Period cooks corrected this by adding warming ingredients—spice, sugar, and eggs—making dishes like pumpion pie both healthful and seasonally balanced.

Glossary: Pompion — early English spelling of pumpkin; Caudle — a warm sauce of egg yolk and wine; Verjuice — acidic juice from unripe grapes used for tartness.

Original Recipes

A. The Compleat Cook (1658)

To make a Pumpion Pie.
Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handfull of Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and sweet Marjoram slipped off the stalks, and chop them small, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and six Cloves, and beat them; take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you think fit, then fry them like a froiz; after it is fryed, let it stand till it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne round wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz, and a layer of Apples with Currans betwixt the layers while your Pye is fitted, and put in a good deal of sweet Butter before you close it; when the Pye is baked, take six yolks of Eggs, some white Wine or Verjuice, and make a Caudle thereof, cut up the Lid, and pour it in, then sugar it, and serve it up.

B. Hannah Woolley, The Queen-Like Closet (1670)

To make a Pumpion Pye.
Take the Pumpion, and pare it, and slice it thin, and stew it till it be tender, then mash it and season it with beaten Spice, Sugar, and Rosewater, and lay it in your Pye, and put in good store of Butter, and when it is baked, pour in a Caudle made of Eggs, Sack, and Sugar, and serve it hot.

Period Technique: A caudle is a lightly thickened sauce of wine (or sack) and egg yolks, poured into a hot pie to glaze and enrich it just before serving.

Choose Your Pie: The 1658 version is savory-sweet with herbs, apples, and currants; the 1670 version is silkier and perfumed with rosewater and sack. Both are unmistakably 17th-century.

Soops and Mashed Potatoes – How a Tudor Luxury Became a Holiday Staple

Soops and Mashed Potatoes – How a Tudor Luxury Became a Holiday Staple

A Dutch still-life evoking the abundance of a 17th-century banquet — a perfect match for the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Editor’s Note: As autumn turns to feast season, the next several posts on Give It Forth explore a different kind of Thanksgiving table — one inspired not by Pilgrims and pumpkins, but by the kitchens of Tudor and Stuart England. These 16th- and 17th-century dishes, drawn from sources like Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660), showcase the foods and flavors that would have graced a festive English winter board. Presented here in modern form, each recipe offers a way to bring history to an American Thanksgiving — blending Old World elegance with New World abundance.

Historical Note: Today, mashed potatoes feel indispensable on a Thanksgiving table. But in the 17th century, potatoes were still exotic — treated more like a luxurious root or even a dessert component than a plain side. This post traces that transformation through three recipes: Robert May’s Tudor-style “soops,” an early Georgian dish of potatoes “beat up with cream,” and the first printed recipe to use the phrase “mashed potatoes.”

Potatoes reached England in the late sixteenth century, but for a hundred years they remained rare and refined. The following three recipes trace how they evolved from May’s sweet-spiced “soops” to the creamy, savory mashed potatoes we know today.

A grand 17th-century “sallet” of roast meats, pickled vegetables, citrus, and herbs — Robert May’s elegant Tudor salad for a Thanksgiving feast.

A Grand Sallet of Minced Capon and Pickled Things – Robert May’s Festive Cold Salad (1660)

A Dutch still-life evoking the abundance of a 17th-century banquet — a perfect match for the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Editor’s Note: As autumn turns to feast season, the next several posts on Give It Forth explore a different kind of Thanksgiving table — one inspired not by Pilgrims and pumpkins, but by the kitchens of Tudor and Stuart England. These 16th- and 17th-century dishes, drawn from sources like Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660), showcase the foods and flavors that would have graced a festive English winter board. Presented here in modern form, each recipe offers a way to bring history to an American Thanksgiving — blending Old World elegance with New World abundance.

Historical Note: The Tudors and Stuarts did not celebrate Thanksgiving as we do in America today. This series simply imagines how dishes from their winter feasts — roasts, “made dishes,” puddings, and spiced pies — 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.

The Historical Recipe

To make a Grand Sallet of minced Capon, Veal, roast Mutton, Chicken or Neats Tongue.
Minced capon or veal, &c. dried tongues in thin slices, lettice shred small as the tongue, olives, capers, mushrooms, pickled samphire, broom-buds, lemon or oranges, raisins, almonds, blew figs, Virginia potato, caparones, or crucifix pease, currans, pickled oysters, taragon.

How to dish it up.
Any of these being thin sliced, as is shown above said, with a little minced taragon and onion amongst it; then have lettice minced as small as the meat by it self, olives by themselves, capers by themselves, samphire by it self, broom-buds by it self, pickled mushrooms by themselves, or any of the materials abovesaid. Garnish the dish with oranges and lemons in quarters or slices, oyl and vinegar beaten together, and poured over all, &c.

To make a grand Sallet of divers Compounds.
Take a cold roast capon and cut it into thin slices square and small, (or any other roast meat as chicken, mutton, veal, or neats tongue) mingle with it a little minced taragon and an onion, then mince lettice as small as the capon, mingle all together, and lay it in the middle of a clean scoured dish. Then lay capers by themselves, olives by themselves, samphire by it self, broom buds, pickled mushrooms, pickled oysters, lemon, orange, raisins, almonds, blue-figs, Virginia Potato, caperons, crucifix pease, and the like, more or less, as occasion serves, lay them by themselves in the dish round the meat in partitions. Then garnish the dish sides with quarters of oranges, or lemons, or in slices, oyl and vinegar beaten together, and poured on it over all.

On fish days, a roast, broil’d, or boil’d pike boned, and being cold, slice it as abovesaid.

— Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660)

The Historical Recipe

To make a Grand Sallet of minced Capon, Veal, roast Mutton, Chicken or Neats Tongue.
Minced capon or veal, &c. dried tongues in thin slices, lettice shred small as the tongue, olives, capers, mushrooms, pickled samphire, broom-buds, lemon or oranges, raisins, almonds, blew figs, Virginia potato, caparones, or crucifix pease, currans, pickled oysters, taragon.

How to dish it up.
Any of these being thin sliced, as is shown above said, with a little minced taragon and onion amongst it; then have lettice minced as small as the meat by it self, olives by themselves, capers by themselves, samphire by it self, broom-buds by it self, pickled mushrooms by themselves, or any of the materials abovesaid. Garnish the dish with oranges and lemons in quarters or slices, oyl and vinegar beaten together, and poured over all, &c.

— Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660)