Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 41 Soupes

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

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41.  Soupes
Take marye do hit yn a pot withe hony poudyr of pepyr poudyre of gyngere canelle & a leye hit take brede cut hit yne gobettys tost hem couche hem yne dysches loke thy syryp be salt ghyf hit a coloure of safrone and serve hit forthe.

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This recipe is an oddity.  If followed as written, the result would likely be honey-covered marrow on toast.  Given that the other recipes for "sops", such as the ones given below, generally use almond milk as a base, I suspect that this recipe is a copying error.

To mak soupes dorrey tak almondes and bray them asid wring them up and boile them with wyn and temper them with wyne and salt then toost whit bred and lay it in a disshe and enbane it with wyne and pour it ouer the met and florisshe it with sugur and guingere and serue it.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

Sowpes Dorry. XX.IIII. II. Take Almaundes brayed, drawe hem up with wyne. ooile it, cast þeruppon safroun and salt, take brede itosted in wyne. lay þerof a leyne and anoþer of þe sewe and alle togydre. florish it with sugur powdour gyngur and serue it forth.  [Forme of Cury (England, 1390)]

Soppes Dorre. Take rawe Almondes, And grynde hem in A morter, And temper hem with wyn and drawe hem thorgh a streynour; And lete hem boyle, And cast there-to Saffron, Sugur, and salt; And then take a paynmain, And kut him and tost him, And wete him in wyne, And ley hem in a dissh, and caste the siryppe thereon, and make a dregge (Note: dredge. Douce MS. dragge) of pouder ginger, sugur, Canell, Clowes, and maces, And cast thereon; And whan hit is I-Dressed, serue it forth fore a good potage.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]