Sucket was a kind of confectionary or dessert popular in early modern England. The word is related to succade, a kind of dried fruit.
The dish was a sweetmeat involving sugar plums and dried fruit in thick syrup flavoured with ginger and other spices. The dried fruits themselves were called "suckets" or "dry suckets".[1] As a dessert course, it was sometimes brought to the table in a silver "sucket barrel" and eaten with silver "sucket forks". These seem to have been the earliest table forks used in England.[2][3]
Elizabeth I was given three sugar loaves and a barrel of sucket by Lady Yorke as a New Year's Day gift in 1562.[4] She ate sucket at Kenilworth Castle in 1575. Mary, Queen of Scots, ate it as a prisoner at Tutbury Castle.[5]
References
edit- ^ Hannele Klematillā, 'Sucket', Darra Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford, 2015), p. 662.
- ^ Arthur Collins, Jewels and Plate of Elizabeth I (London, 1955), pp. 430 no. 814, 433 no. 832, 584 no. 1558, 591-2 no. 1581.
- ^ Phillipa Glanville, 'Sucket fork', Darra Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford, 2015), p. 661.
- ^ John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2014), p. 244.
- ^ British Library, Mary, Queen of Scots: two new acquisitions
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