Sucket was a kind of confectionary or dessert popular in early modern England. The word is related to succade, which refers to 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]
John Smith wrote of his voyages and colonial activities using sugar and sucket as a metaphor for colonial activity. He had been "a reall Actor" on the hunt for "chests of Sugar" and "Boats of Sugar, Marmelade, Suckets".[6]
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
- ^ Lauren Working, "James VI and I's Banqueting Houses: A Transatlantic Perspective", British Art Studies, 29 (December 2025). doi:10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-29/lworking
