Sucket Explained

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, sucket was sometimes brought to the table in a silver "sucket barrel" and eaten with silver forks, known as "sucket forks". These forks seem to have been the earliest table forks in use 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] Elizabeth ate sucket at Kenilworth Castle in 1575. Mary, Queen of Scots enjoyed sucket as a prisoner at Tutbury Castle.^[5]

Notes and References

1. Hannele Klematillā, 'Sucket', Darra Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford, 2015), p. 662.
2. Arthur Collins, Jewels and Plate of Elizabeth I (London, 1955), pp. 430 no. 814, 433 no. 832, 584 no. 1558, 591-2 no. 1581.
3. Phillipa Glanville, 'Sucket fork', Darra Goldstein, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (Oxford, 2015), p. 661.
4. John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2014), p. 244.
5. [British Library]