Food and drink

The perfect post for a winter’s day: Marissa Nicosia shares an early modern recipe for hot chocolate, associated with 17th-century author, botanist, and pirate William Hughes.

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.

As October comes to an end, we celebrate food, drink, and culture in the German cities of Shakespeare’s day, including the creation of beer and wine and the harvest festivals each fall, marked by our modern-day tradition of Oktoberfest.

Shakespeare’s witches, like nearly all witches of Shakespeare’s time, have their roots in the kitchen more than in the study.

Mince pies and a honey-spiced drink called mirth are just two of hundreds of recipes found in a 17th-century handwritten recipe book once owned by Leticia Cromwell.

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.

Salmon, oysters, asparagus, and grapes are all ingredients in this unusual pie recipe from Francine Segan’s cookbook “Shakespeare’s Kitchen.”

Francine Segan, a food historian with a taste for the Renaissance, adapts a 1610 handwritten recipe for rose cakes from a recipe book that’s part of the Folger collection.

Food historian Francine Segan has a taste for the Renaissance and a love of Shakespeare. Here she adapts a recipe for “Citron pye” from a 1587 cookbook. You’ll find an intense combination of vinegar and pepper in these citrus tarts.

Park’s Shakspearean Twelfth-Night Characters. Handcolored print, ca. 1830. Folger Shakespeare Library. Twelfth Night is a Christian holiday typically celebrated on January 5 or 6, concluding the 12 days of Christmas and celebrating the visit of the Magi (the three kings). Twelfth…

Francine Segan is a food historian with a taste for the Renaissance. She’s the author of six cookbooks, including Shakespeare’s Kitchen (2003) and the Opera Lover’s Cookbook, which was nominated for a James Beard award. This year she’s been spending…

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.