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 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.
Green Pudding of Sweet Herbs – A Tudor Boiled Pudding from The Accomplisht Cook (1660)
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.
A 17th-century-inspired feast still life. Alongside the roast, dishes like green puddings of sweet herbs added color and richness to the Tudor–Stuart table.
On a Tudor or early Stuart winter table, not every “pudding” was sweet. Many were savoury, herbal, and vividly green — rich with cream and egg yolks, scented with mace and nutmeg, and studded with currants and dates. Robert May’s “green boil’d Pudding of sweet Herbs” is one of these: a bread-and-cream pudding colored with spinach juice and flavored with a whole garden of herbs.
He tells us that these puddings are “excellent for stuffings of roast or boil’d Poultrey, Kid, Lamb, or Turkey, Veal, or Breasts of Mutton.” In other words, they could be served in slices as a side dish, or used as a rich, herbal forcemeat filling for meat and fowl.
The Original: A Green Boil’d Pudding of Sweet Herbs
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.
This short paragraph carries a great deal of information: it tells us the base (bread and cream), the enrichment (egg yolks, suet, marrow), the “green” element (spinach juice and herbs), the seasoning (currants, dates, sugar, spices), and the preferred cooking method (boiled as a pudding, then served or used as stuffing).
What Is a Boiled Pudding?
In the 16th and 17th centuries, many puddings were cooked not in tins, but in cloth. The mixture was poured into a floured or buttered linen or canvas pudding cloth, tied securely, and boiled in a pot of water or broth until set. Afterward, the pudding was turned out, sometimes browned before the fire, and served in slices. The same method works for both sweet and savoury puddings.
Glossary: Penny Loaf, Spinage, & Peniroyal
Penny white loaf: A small, fine white bread, roughly similar to a modern small boule or 250–300 g of white sandwich bread (without the crusts).
Juyce of spinage: Spinach juice — spinach leaves pounded or blended, then squeezed to extract a vivid green juice used to color and flavor the pudding.
Peniroyal (pennyroyal): A strongly flavored mint family herb. Because modern pennyroyal is not considered food-safe, we omit it here and rely on marjoram, thyme, and savory instead.
Tudor Appetizers: Entrées de Table from The Accomplisht Cook
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,” 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.
A clove-studded roast turkey in the Tudor–Stuart style, served with citrus, herbs, and bread sippets. Here it stands in for the “entrance to the table” in Robert May’s 1660 kitchen.
If the roast turkey is the great centerpiece of a holiday table, then the entrées de table are its graceful opening act. In the mid-seventeenth century, English cooks like Robert May borrowed the French idea of “made dishes” — elegant, composed plates of meats, vegetables, and fruits — and set them out as an entrance to the table: the first sight that greeted guests as they sat down to dine.
They are, in many ways, the ancestors of our modern appetizers: small, complex, carefully arranged dishes meant to delight the eye as much as the appetite.
“Another made Dish in the French Fashion”
Another made Dish in the French Fashion, called an Entre de Table, Entrance to the Table.
Take the bottoms of boil’d Artichocks, the yolks of hard Eggs, yong Chicken-peepers, or Pidgeon-peepers, finely trust, Sweetbreads of Veal, Lamb-stones, blanched, and put them in a Pipkin, with Cockstones, and combs, and knots of Eggs; then put to them some strong broth, white-wine, large Mace, Nutmeg, Pepper, Butter, Salt, and Marrow, and stew them softly together.
Then have Goosberries or Grapes perboil’d, or Barberries, and put to them some beaten Butter; and Potato’s, Skirrets or Sparagus boil’d, and put in beaten butter, and some boil’d Pistaches.
These being finely stewed, dish your fowls on fine carved sippets, and pour on your Sweet-Breads, Artichocks, and Sparagus on them, Grapes, and slic’t Lemon, and run all over with beaten butter, &c.
Somtimes for variety, you may put some boil’d Cabbidge, Lettice, Colliflowers, Balls of minced meat, or Sausages without skins, fryed Almonds, Calves Udder.
This is less a single recipe than a palette of ingredients: delicate pieces of poultry, artichokes, asparagus, grapes, potatoes, skirrets, pistachios, cabbage, and cauliflower — all gently stewed in white wine and butter, then arranged over carved sippets (toasted bread) and finished with lemon and more butter. It is sophisticated, seasonal, and abundantly flexible, just as a modern appetizer spread might be.
Historical Note: What Is an “Entre de Table”?
In early modern menu language, an entré(e) or entre de table was a “made dish” that entered the table with the first course. Rather than a single roast, it was a composed plate or platter: small pieces of meat, vegetables, and fruits layered together in a rich broth or sauce. These dishes sat between the great roasts and pies, offering variety and visual interest. They are close cousins to what we would now call appetizers or small plates.
Glossary: Sweetbreads, Sippets & Pipkins
Sweetbreads: The delicate thymus or pancreas of calf or lamb, prized for its tender texture. In modern kitchens, you can substitute small pieces of chicken thigh or breast for a similar feel.
Lamb-stones, cockstones & combs: Period terms for various small offal pieces and cockerel combs used as delicacies. For most modern cooks, diced chicken or turkey can stand in.
Knots of Eggs: Tiny curds or clusters made by stirring beaten egg into hot liquid, or small egg yolks poached together.
Pipkin: A small earthenware pot used for gentle stewing over coals.
Sippets: Thin slices or shapes of bread, toasted or fried, used to soak up sauces and form the base of a dish.
