Looking for inspiration for your holiday table? Look no further than the Folger’s adaptations of recipes in our collection—from early modern stuffing to sweet potato pudding to pumpkin pie, even mini-turkey pies!
The Folger holds the world’s largest collection of hand written recipe books from early modern Britain. These books were often compiled by women. They collected culinary and medicinal recipes from family and neighbors. There are also entries from the published books of professional cooks and doctors.
Added to from one generation to the next, the Folger’s recipe books show changing tastes and new ingredients. For example, turkeys weren’t even known in England until the 1520s, when they were introduced by explorers returning from the Americas. But within a hundred years, turkey had become a common holiday food. Two of the Folger’s cookbooks, both written around 1700, contain recipes “To Season a Turkey Pie” that feel like a precursor to today’s turducken.
Recipes from the Folger collection have been adapted for modern-day cooks through projects like the Folger’s Before Farm to Table collaborative research initiative, which worked with José Andrés and his ThinkFoodGroup; Marissa Nicosia of Cooking in the Archives; and food historian Michael W. Twitty, among others.
Which recipes will you make for your fall feast?
The early modern precursor to turducken: Adapting an old recipe to make mini pies
Learn about the early modern precursor to turducken. Think a huge turkey pie with duck but no chicken. Then, make your own mini turkey pies using this adapted recipe for modern cooks from the Folger collection.
Much Ado About Stuffing: Recreating an early modern stuffing recipe
An anonymous early modern cookbook in the Folger collection has two turkey and stuffing recipes: one made with oysters, and one without, reflecting the foods available at the original Thanksgiving meals. We adapt the oyster-less recipe for modern kitchens.
From the archive to the oven: How to make a sweet potato pudding
Folger researchers recently uncovered a very early European potato recipe in our archives in a collection kept by the Grenville family from c. 1640-1750. “To make a potato puding” shows the growing popularity of this New World food in England.
A 17th-century potato pie with marrow and dates
You might not think of a potato pie as traditionally English, yet 17th-century cookery books show that English people enjoyed pies made with mashed or blended sweet potatoes mixed with condensed milk, eggs, and spices as this adapted recipe shows.
Savory biscuits from a 17th-century recipe
Want to add variety to your Thanksgiving? Try this modernized 17th-century recipe from the Folger collection for savory biscuits, fluffy and sweet and savory and firm and spiced all at the same time, recorded around 1672 in Constance Hall’s recipe book.
A pumpkin pie recipe from 17th-century England
One of the earliest recipes for pumpkin pie can be found in the Folger vaults: “To make a Pumpion Pie,” which appears in a 17th-century cookbook by Hannah Woolley, one of the first women in early modern Britain to earn a living by her writing.
Keep exploring
Before the Thanksgiving turkey came the banquet peacock
Lavish dinners—and the cookbooks and instruction manuals for how to execute them—were popular during the Renaissance, and they emphasized the art of food, in addition to—and at times, over—its taste. Peacocks were thus an ideal banquet food because their colorful…
The turkey’s journey from the Atlantic to the early modern Islamic world
Follow the turkey on its fascinating journey from America to Europe to the Mughal and Ottoman empires, through early modern trade networks.
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