Cawdelle Ferry: A Medieval Wine Caudle from Harleian MS 279 (c. 1430)

Cawdelle Ferry: A Medieval Wine Caudle from Harleian MS 279

First published February 2, 2016. Updated June 19, 2026.

Cawdelle Ferry, a spiced wine caudle thickened with egg yolks.

Cawdelle Ferry is one of those medieval recipes that refuses to sit politely in a modern category. It is made from wine, egg yolks, sugar, saffron, and spices. It is warmed gently, stirred until thick, and served with white powder scattered over the top.

In the original version of this article, I described it as a wine pudding. That was not entirely wrong, but it was incomplete. Cawdelle Ferry is better understood as a medieval caudle: a warm, often restorative preparation that could range from drinkable to spoonable depending on how it was thickened.

What makes this recipe especially interesting is that it was not a one-off curiosity. Versions of Cawdelle Ferry appear across English culinary manuscripts for more than a century, using wine, sugar or honey, saffron, egg yolks, bread, almonds, starch, rice flour, raisins, and spices. This is not just a recipe. It is a recipe family.

Why this recipe matters: Cawdelle Ferry helps us understand the medieval caudle as something more complex than a hot drink. Across several manuscripts, it appears as a fortified wine preparation thickened into a rich, nourishing dish that sits somewhere between drink, pottage, custard, and pudding.

Lyode Soppes: One of England's Earliest Bread Puddings

Lyode Soppes: A 15th-Century Bread Pudding from Harleian MS 279

First published January 13, 2016. Updated June 19, 2026.

Lyode Soppes, a sweet custard pottage served over fine white bread.

If modern bread pudding has a medieval ancestor, Lyode Soppes is one of the strongest candidates I have found. Recorded in Harleian MS 279 around 1430, this dish combines rounds of fine white bread with a gently thickened custard of milk, egg yolks, sugar, and salt.

But is it truly bread pudding, or is it better understood as a sweet custard pottage? The answer is, deliciously, both. Lyode Soppes is not baked like modern bread pudding. The bread is cut into round sops, placed in a dish, and covered with warm custard. The manuscript itself tells us to serve it “for a potage.”

This has long been one of my favorite breakfast recipes from the manuscript. It is simple, comforting, and surprisingly familiar. Across nearly six centuries, bread, milk, eggs, and sugar still know how to sit together at the table.

Why this recipe matters: Lyode Soppes documents bread served with custard in a fifteenth-century English cookbook. It is best understood as a sweet custard pottage, but it also sits very close to what modern cooks would recognize as an early form of bread pudding.

Creme Boylede – A Luxurious Medieval Boiled Custard from Harleian MS 279

Creme Boylede garnished with pomegranate seeds

Originally published January 11, 2016. Updated June 2026.

Creme Boylede is a rich medieval boiled custard made from cream or milk, bread, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and salt. It appears in Harleian MS 279, a fifteenth-century English cookery manuscript dated to about 1430, and it is one of those recipes that looks simple until you begin asking what kind of dish it actually was.

Modern diners are likely to read the ingredients and think “dessert.” A medieval cook may have understood it differently. The recipe appears among the pottages, but it also instructs the cook to serve the finished custard “in manner of mortrewys,” linking it to a style of thick, carefully prepared dishes that could function as special dishes or entremets. That makes Creme Boylede a beautiful little category-goblin: part custard, part pottage, part feast-table luxury.

It is also delicious. The bread is soaked in cream or milk, warmed, strained, and then enriched with egg yolks, butter, sugar, and salt. The result is smooth, sweet, and comforting, with the texture of a soft custard and the thrift of a medieval kitchen hiding under all that cream.