375 Year Old French Pumpkin Soup Recipe From 1651

Max Miller of Tasting History, who previously shared a 1796 recipe for “pompkin” pie and a “pumpion pie” from 1670, reached even further into history to prepare a French pumpkin soup from a 1651 recipe created by François Pierre de la Varenne.

This cookbook was written by François Pierre de la Varenne, who’s credited with leading the shift away from highly spiced medieval and renaissance foods into what we would call French haute cuisine. He was into showcasing the flavor of the key ingredient in whatever he made, and this soup does it.

As the soup simmered, Miller explained the long history of the pumpkin as we know it.

…while they were squashes or gourds, they were not typically what we today would call a pumpkin. Those came over a bit later, brought by the English and French colonists in what is now the Atlantic coast of the US and Canada. And this is the area from where the actual word pumpkin originates. ….This is one of the first recipes for pumpkin soup where we can be sure that the pumpkin they’re referring to is a new world pumpkin.

Previous Historical Pumpkin Recipes