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Butter’d French Beans (1660) — Robert May’s Table Greens for a Holiday Feast

Part of the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series — exploring how early modern English cooks transformed simple vegetables into elegant side dishes fit for the season’s most abundant table.

Still Life of Autumn Fruits and Vegetables — shared image for the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series, evoking abundance and the early-modern feast.

A Gentle Dish for the Early-Modern Table

By the mid-17th century, “French beans” — the New World haricot — had become a fashionable vegetable in England. Robert May includes several recipes for them in The Accomplisht Cook (1660), treating them tenderly with butter, vinegar, and spice. They offer a luminous green note amid the roasts, puddings, pies, and rich sauces of the season — a perfect complement to a modern Thanksgiving table inspired by early modern English cookery.

Historical Context

New World Origins: Haricot beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are native to Central and South America. Long before European contact, Indigenous farmers cultivated dozens of varieties—green beans, kidney beans, and shelling beans—across Mesoamerica and the Andes. They formed part of the “Three Sisters” agricultural system alongside maize and squash.

Arrival in Europe: Spanish explorers brought these New World beans to Europe in the early 1500s. By the 1530s they appear in Mediterranean gardens; by the 1550s they were fashionable in Italy and France, where they were prized for their thin, edible pods. England, following French horticultural fashion, adopted them slightly later—thus the English name “French beans.”

Adoption in England: By the late 1500s, green beans were grown in English kitchen gardens, though still considered something of an imported delicacy. Herbalists such as John Gerard (1597) describe “the French bean which cometh from beyond the seas,” distinguishing it from the older Old World broad bean (Vicia faba). These slender beans were more tender, easier to cook, and well suited to the new culinary trend of lightly prepared vegetables.

Why They Appear in May (1660): By Robert May’s time, French beans had become a regular feature in elite kitchens. His recipe aligns with the era’s preference for simple treatments—boiling, buttering, and seasoning—allowing the vegetable’s natural color and delicacy to shine. The touch of vinegar and nutmeg reflects early-modern taste for balancing “cold and moist” foods with warming spices.

From New World to Tudor Thanksgiving: The journey of the French bean—from Indigenous agriculture to Spanish ships, to French gardens, to English cookbooks—mirrors the broader Columbian Exchange that reshaped European foodways. Serving this dish at a modern Thanksgiving connects the contemporary holiday table with the very ingredients that transformed 17th-century English cooking.

Original Recipe 

Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (London: 1660), p. 204.
Public link to the recipe on Archive.org

To stew French Beans.
Take your French beans and string them, then seeth them well in fair water; when they are tender, put them into a pipkin with some sweet butter, a little vinegar, pepper, and salt; and shake them well together. Serve them hot, with grated nutmeg cast upon them.

Still Life of Autumn Fruits and Vegetables — shared image for the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series, evoking abundance and the early-modern feast.

Home › Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series › Barberry Sauce for Roast Meats (1660)

Barberry Sauce for Roast Meats (1660) — A Tudor & Stuart Alternative to Cranberries

Part of the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series — exploring how early modern English cooks used tart, jewel-red fruits like barberries to brighten rich feasts in much the same way we use cranberry sauce today.

A Sharp, Scarlet Counterpoint to Roast Meat

Long before cranberries became iconic on American holiday tables, English cooks were using barberries to do a very similar job. These tiny, vivid red berries — the fruit of the shrub Berberis vulgaris — appear in 16th- and 17th-century English recipes as garnishes, pickles, and sharp, “cooling” sauces for goose, pig, pork, and rich pies.

In The Accomplisht Cook (1660), Robert May scatters barberries through pies and dressings, and suggests them in sauces for goose and other roasted fowl. Their bright acidity and ruby colour made them a perfect foil for fatty meats — a role cranberries would come to play later in colonial New England.

Barberries, Cranberries, and the Thanksgiving Table

Barberries in England: Barberries are native to Europe and western Asia. In early modern England they were valued both as a medicine and a culinary ingredient, especially for their sharp taste and striking colour. They were used in pickles, preserves, sauces, and as garnishes on rich dishes, and were common enough to appear repeatedly in British recipe books and household manuscripts.

Cranberries in North America: Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) are native to North America. Indigenous peoples in New England and the Canadian Maritimes harvested them for food, dye, and medicine. Seventeenth-century English accounts of New England describe “craneberries” being eaten with meat and as part of pemmican-like preparations.

Parallel Uses, Different Histories: While there is no surviving English recipe that says “use cranberries where you would use barberries,” the two fruits occupy very similar roles:

• Both are small, tart, scarlet berries.
• Both were served with rich meats as a sharp, refreshing contrast.
• Both appear in sauces, relishes, and preserves.

In England, barberries remain the canonical choice in the 17th century; in colonial New England, cranberries fill the local niche. For modern historical cooks in North America, cranberries can be a practical stand-in when barberries are unavailable — as long as we are clear that the substitution is modern, not Tudor or Stuart.

Period Sources: Barberries in Robert May’s Kitchen

Sauce for a Goose — Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660)

The following comes from May’s “Sauce for a stubble or fat Goose”, which gives two forms. The second explicitly calls for barberries in a rich apple-based sauce.

Source: Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (London, 1660), “Sauce for a stubble or fat Goose.” The full text is available via Project Gutenberg and early modern facsimiles.

Sauce for a stubble or fat Goose.
1. The Goose being scalded, drawn, and trust, put a handful of salt in the belly of it, roast it, and make sauce with sowr apples slic’t, and boil’d in beer all to mash, then put to it sugar and beaten butter. Sometime for veriety add barberries and the gravy of the fowl.

2. Roast sowr apples or pippins, strain them, and put to them vinegar, sugar, gravy, barberries, grated bread, beaten cinamon, mustard, and boil’d onions strained and put to it.

To Pickle Barberries Red — Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660)

May also gives directions for pickling barberries, which provide the preserved fruit used in sauces throughout the year.

Source: Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (London, 1660), section on pickles and preserves (often titled “To pickle Grapes, Gooseberries, Barberries, red and white Currans” and related entries).

To Pickle Barberries Red.
When your Barbaries are picked from the leaves in clusters, about Michaelmas, or when they are ripe, let your water boyl, and give them a half a dozen walms; let your pickle be white-wine and vinegar, not too sharp, so put them up for your use.

Sweet Potatoes Three Ways (1660–1670) — May & Woolley at the Early-Modern Table

Home › Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series › Sweet Potatoes Three Ways (1660–1670)

Sweet Potatoes Three Ways (1660–1670) — Robert May & Hannah Woolley

Part of the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series — exploring how early modern English cooks transformed New World ingredients into elegant, comforting, and festive dishes fit for the season’s most abundant table.

Still Life of Autumn Fruits and Vegetables — shared image for the Tudor & Stuart Thanksgiving Series, evoking abundance and the early-modern feast.

A New World Root, Transformed by English Cooks

Sweet potatoes — known in 17th-century England as “Spanish Potatoes” — arrived through Spanish trade routes in the early 1500s. Originating in Central and South America, Ipomoea batatas traveled across the Atlantic decades before the white potato and quickly became associated with luxury, warmth, and even medicinal virtues.

By the time of Robert May and Hannah Woolley, sweet potatoes were considered both a delicacy and a curiosity: sweet, moist, filling, and ideal for combining with sugar, sack, spices, and butter. These dishes, though rarely seen on modern tables, shimmer with warmth and holiday resonance — a perfect trio for a historically inspired Thanksgiving feast.

Expanded Historical Notes: Sweet Potatoes in Early Modern England

New World Origins: Sweet potatoes were cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the Caribbean, Central America, and the Andes long before European contact. Their sweetness, vivid color, and adaptability made them an ideal export crop during the Age of Exploration.

Arrival via Spain: Spanish ships carried sweet potatoes to Europe in the early 1500s; they quickly spread through Mediterranean trade networks and then northward. They reached England by the 1520s–1530s, where they were sold as exotic novelties — often linked to aphrodisiac qualities and “warming” humoral properties.

“Spanish Potatoes” vs. “Potatoes”: Early modern English texts differentiate between:

• Spanish Potatoes — sweet potatoes
• Potatoes — the newly introduced white/Irish potato

May uses both terms; Woolley uses both interchangeably depending on the edition. In culinary practice, the sweet potato is the one combined with sugar, spices, and citrus.

Humoral Medicine: Sweet potatoes were classed as “hot and moist,” nourishing and gentle on the stomach. Combined with warming spices (cinnamon, nutmeg), sugar, or sack (fortified wine), they were thought to strengthen the body in cold months — making them an ideal winter dish.

Culinary Meaning: These recipes show how New World ingredients integrated into English feasting culture — sweet, rich, buttery, and festive. Serving them today forms a bridge between the Columbian Exchange and the modern Thanksgiving table.

Period Recipes (Three Ways)

1. Robert May — The Accomplisht Cook (1660)

“To butter Potatoes.”
From The Accomplisht Cook, Book V, p. 225 (1660).
Public link to May’s recipe

To butter Potatoes.
Take Potatoes and roast them, then peel them and slice them; then strew sugar, cinnamon, and salt on them, and put in a piece of butter; then toss them up, and serve them hot.

2. Hannah Woolley — The Queen-Like Closet (1670)

“To Preserve Potatoes.”
Book I, “To Preserve Potatoes.”
Public link to Woolley

To Preserve Potatoes.
Take your Potatoes, and slice them very thin, then boil them in water till they be tender; then take them up, and dry them, and boil Sugar and water to a thickness; then put in your Potatoes, with a little Rosewater, and so keep them for your use.

3. Woolley Tradition — Potato Pottage (17th c.)

Referenced across multiple household manuals of the 1650s–1670s; a warming household dish.

Potato Pottage.
Boil your Potatoes in fair water or broth till they be tender; then bruise them, and put to them strong broth, a little grated bread, sweet butter, and such herbs as you like; season it with Salt, and so serve it well stewed.