Robert May’s “French Bread” (1660s) – Enriched Rolls, Baked Hot

Robert May’s “To make French Bread the best way”

Originally published 3/6/2021 / Updated 10/2/2025

Robert May’s “French Bread” (not a baguette!)

I must smile whenever I reference “bread,” because people love the pastry-vs-bread debate. Here’s my stance in short: all pastries are bread, but not all breads are pastries—the line is mostly about fat and enrichment (and intended use). May’s “French bread” sits right on that line: a white, enriched roll—egg whites and warm milk—baked quickly and served hot. It’s not a Parisian baguette; it’s a 17th-century English cook’s idea of French-style white bread.

What May means by “French bread”

• Source: Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook (1660; 1685 ed.).
• Enrichment: whites of six eggs, warm milk + water, plenty of salt.
• Shape & bake: “rouls” or in little wooden dishes; quick hot oven; “chip it hot.”
• Leavening: ale barm/yeast (commercial yeast works fine; a splash of mild ale is a nod to flavor).

Deep dive on period white breads: see my pillar post White Bread in Early Modern England.

Kitchen Adventures – An Onion Pottage, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

An Onion Pottage

Fry good store of slic’t onions, then have a pipkin of boiling liquor over the fire, when the liquor bils put in the fryed onions, butter and all, with pepper and salt: being well stewed together, serve in on sops of French bread.

Interpreted Recipe

3 tbsp. olive oil
½ pound of onions peeled and sliced 1/4 “thick
4 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Melt butter in a large skillet, add sliced onions and sauté for about 10 minutes or until golden brown stirring occasionally. Bring broth to boil, add onions and cook over medium heat for ten minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Put toasted bread in individual bowls, pour broth over the onions and serve immediately.

Kitchen Adventures – To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

To Marinate Salmon to Be Eaten Cold

Take a Salmon, cut it into joles and rands, & fry them in good sweet sallet oyl or clarified butter, then set them by in a charger, and have some white or claret-wine, & wine vinegar as much as will cover it, put the wine & vinegar into a pipkin with all manner of sweet herbs bound up in a bundle as rosemary, thyme, sweet marjoram, parsly winter-savory, bay-leaves, sorrel, and sage, as much of one as the other, large mace, slic’t ginger, gross pepper, slic’t nutmeg, whole cloves, and salt; being well boil’d together, pour it on the fish, spices and all, being cold, then lay on slic’t lemons, and lemon-peel, and cover it up close; so keep it for present spending, and serve it hot or cold with the same liquor it is soust in, with the spices, herbs, and lemons on it.

If to keep long, pack it up in a vessel that will but just hold it, put to it no lemons nor herbs, only bay-leaves; if it be well packed, it will keep as long as sturgeon, but then it must not be splatted, but cut round ways through chine and all.

To Marinate Salmon to be Eaten Cold

1 ½ -2 pounds salmon
4 tbsp. butter or oil
¼ c minced parsley
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. peppercorns
4 cloves
1 bay leaf
½ nutme g broken up
1 large piece whole mace
¼ tsp . each thyme, rosemary, marjoram, savory and sage
6 tbsp. wine vinegar
1 ¼ cup wine
1 lemon sliced thin and seeded

Rinse the salmon under cold water and pat dry with a towel. Cut into squares. Melt the butter in a pan, or heat the oil and saute the fish until it is cooked.

Heat the herbs, spices, vinegar and wine in a pot until it boils. Lower heat and cook for ten minutes.

Layer the salmon in a deep bowl and pour the hot marinade over the salmon. Arrange the lemon slices over the top, pushing a few down at the sides of the bowl. Cover and set aside until the marinade has cooled.

Refrigerate until needed. Serve cold with some of the marinade poured over it.

Kitchen Adventures – To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May

To Broil Bace, The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May 

Take a bace, draw it and wash it clean, broil it with the scales on, or without the scales, and lay it in a dish with some good sallet oyl, wine-vinegar, salt, some sprigs of rosemary, tyme, and parsley, then heat the gridiron and lay on the fish, broil it on a soft fire on the embers, and baste it with the sauce it was steeped in, being broild serve it in a clean warm dish with the sauce it was steeped in, and the herbs on it, and about the dish, cast on salt, and so serve it with slices of orange, lemon , or barberries.


Or broil it in butter and venegar with herbs as above-said and make sauce with beaten butter and vinegar.

To Broil Bass

2 pound fresh water bass
½ cup white wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp thyme and rosemary
¼ c minced parsley
4 tbsp butter melted
½ lemon sliced thin

Make a marinade of the vinegar, salt, thyme, rosemary and parsley. Place the fish in a shallow baking dish and pour the marinade over it. Marinate for at least half an hour. Sprinkle half the butter over the fish and bake at 350 degrees until cooked. Garnish and serve.