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[Music] just what you have to do when a queen decides she's going to pop in to see you not just any old queen victoria like a pair of obsessed victoria groupies we're pursuing her around the country to the posh pads she visited we'll be delving into her personal diaries to reveal what happened behind closed doors today a visit queen victoria made when she had been on the throne for 22 years we have come to the very northernmost tip of north wales to visit the magnificent and stately and enormous penryn castle and as someone who spent a lifetime getting excited by antiques i'll be exploring the curiosities of the castle that would have surprised victoria these things are gobsmackingly desirable to the really rich of this period and as a chef who's passionate about all sorts of food i'll be downstairs in the kitchen rediscovering an amazing 19th century recipe made for victoria they had the juices in the meat how delicious and giving tim a right royal treat rosemary you have been busy donnie [Music] this doesn't look very victorian do you know something rosemary you're absolutely right it looks medieval but the style is called neo-norman and it was actually constructed in the early 19th century a pure fantasy you know it was built entirely to impress and was completed just before victoria came on the throne in 1837. victoria visited with hubby albert and four of their children and as was the way during these royal outings the kids if not exactly palmed off on her staff were very much seen but not heard they were on their way back from scotland and had made this massive detour all the way to north wales as part of a pr exercise to improve victoria's popularity in the less populated regions and you know they were thrilled to have her bangor came out in droves thousands of people they had illuminations and flags and you know queen victoria said in her diaries it reminded her of arriving in paris but not so posh for me i'm off to the servants entrance and for me it's a medieval gateway [Music] victoria had been to penryn before in 1832 when she was 13 and the place wasn't quite finished but for albert this was the first time a real eye-opener and because he was particularly interested in design and technology he would have been intrigued albert might have chuckled as he passed under this phony medieval gateway like a toy castle penryn's turrets and arrow slits are more fun and games than serious defense devices as queen victoria and albert arrived with the kids in tow they were met by their hosts lord and lady pennant and it's here that victoria would have descended from her carriage and gone through the front door of the castle but i wonder whether she had any opportunity to examine in detail the door itself because it's a turd of force of shammary but my favorite bit has to be the doorknob look at this here we've got a perfect circle that fits into another circle that looks as if it's made of bronze but actually it too is made of oak do these two pieces articulated tool does the bottom bit swing out not a bit of it it's fixed it's simply there for show it's sham and for me it sums up the sham nature of this norman or not so norman castle [Music] this place is all about show and who better to show off to than her match queen victoria was led into this the grand hall a kind of cathedral-like space that on that evening was filled with local dignitaries all the local aristocrats the lord lieutenant and the like the penance were very well connected and filthy rich and it was perhaps this cloud that secured the visit a lot of their cash went on mod cons in fact penryn castle was renowned for its technical gizmos thomas hopper the architect hadn't forgotten creature comforts because this even in the 1830s is an example of warm air central heating this castle on the ground floor has a series of ducks and grills like that that enable the hot air to come in and warm the guests wonderful while victoria was having her tutsis warmed in the hallway her staff would have been lugging the royal baggage over to the other side of the castle this servant service area is enormous you've got the housekeeper's tower over there then you've got the footman's tower just sneaked over the other side footman had their own tower and then you've got an ice tower which is over here there was a soup kitchen there was a bakery and there was a laundry it was all here the heat was on to rustle up royal feast helping me to rediscover the story of victorian cooking is historical food expert ivan day today we're cooking an amazing elaborate feast of a dish it was created by one of victoria's own chefs for grand occasions like this royal visit a spectacular recipe for spit roast beef now what a magnificent piece of fillet this is called a fillet of beef alla provencal devised by francotelli who was victoria's chef in 1841 he only stayed for a year right but basically instructs us to load the phillips and we're then going to marinate it for about an hour right we're then going to put it on a spit yeah and we're going to roast it in front of the fire oh that sounds and what's in the marinade well the marinade has got olive oil in it carrots and onion and a little bit of garlic that's the mediterranean province right so that's why because it doesn't sound very british for a monster garlic wasn't used very much at all in english victorian cooking but you know what these great houses liked was really an anglo-french style of cookery so you're actually landing it now that's something we wouldn't do today it's going to go into spit in front of the roaring fire so it would dry the meat out very very rapidly so you're putting the fat in yeah so um have you done this before have you ever had i've lasted yes yeah have you done it this way you're not using that particular thing no well what i've got here is a little plate with strips of bacon with some ice and salt underneath which makes it like a miniature freezer well they haven't got a freezer in a kitchen like this so you make a little miniature one and it keeps it nice and firm what a great little tip that little tips that's what i'm off to so show me this first of all and then i'll do it myself right well look first of all i've got two sets here of victorian larding pins this is the original holder which every cook had and so these are from the period [Music] as they prepared this dish the kitchen team would also have been juggling to cook eight other courses yes eight to be served to the queen as well as fish other roasts like mutton and game birds would have taken their turns with our beef this is what is called a remove or a releve and it's the course that you have after the fish perfect absolutely amazing yeah sorry carry on you've done it before it's the dish that's really served after the fish the idea was to put as much abundance on the table to honor your royal guest the ironic thing was victoria actually liked plain food and they would pray all these wonderful dishes and she might just say can i have some rice pudding please and they would have to give it to her but they would have to give it up so that would be the big rice pudding while the kitchen staff were beavering away downstairs upstairs the queen would have been enjoying a charm offensive from her hosts the penance as they showed off the grandeur of their house having finished meeting all those dignitaries queen victoria was ushered into this space the penryn library and quite appropriately too because it is a most impressive area and it has the added advantage of being practically unchanged from the moment that victoria visited just look at this lovely little reading room just off the library that's circular and built into one of the castle turrets who knows maybe queen victoria read a little book in here herself [Music] one thing that would have struck victoria walking through the library is the amount of slate on show not surprising since the pennants made their fortune quarrying the stuff up the road and one particular object would definitely have got albert's attention you've got it it's the billiard table this one was ordered in 1844 for colonel douglas pennant and what's unusual about it is that it's made of solid slate slate mined here now these things are absolutely gobsmackingly desirable to the really rich of this period the duke of wellington had one even victoria and albert had one in their home at osborne house on the isle of wight [Music] while albert was potting balls upstairs downstairs the kitchen staff were cooking dinner i've added fat to the beef ready for cooking and now it's time to add some spice for this dish we're using a popular victorian blend of black white and red peppers oh on the tongue the spice coming through fantastic so what we're going to do we've got to plonk it in here okay so we're going to do is very gently give this a thai massage because what you don't want to do is remove the lardings away so we're just going to gently massage the onion the garlic in it's going to marinate for a very short time so the garlic even the carrot flavor gets transmitted just into the surface of the meat it doesn't go into the heart of it that's physically impossible yeah absolutely and we just rub it all in now what i'd like you to do is is to get some of the pepper and give it a really good sprinkle oh yes while i massage the pepper in as well so and even sprinkling be quite generous with it and i'll just rub that in between the larding so it's a puppet steak it's a wonderfully peppered steak but this is very very sophisticated food in the 19th century this is something new only for places like this absolutely only ordinary people wouldn't eat this but we've got to remember that ordinary people are preparing it so how much would this sort of cost in the victorian days well it would probably cost about 10 15 shillings that's about 100 pounds in today's money think about it it hasn't changed money hasn't changed in terms of that piece of meat this has been revered for centuries though this particular cut as being the most tender piece of the animal now what's going to happen now well we'll let it rest for about half an hour and then i'm going to spit it and we'll get it in front of the fire let's hope hrh got a chance to put her feet up in the library because the next stage of lord pennant's tour of the castle involved a bit of a workout the grand staircase and grand it certainly is it's just the sort of stick as you can imagine a queen ascending and eventually it does lead to the royal bedrooms if you don't mind walking for another half a mile or so well it turns out victoria did rather mind that half-mile hike to bed and to avoid it she broke all protocol adela the daughter of the household was only one when the queen came to stay she later published for the family an account of her visit and according to the story victoria liked to take a shortcut to her suite of rooms using the spiral staircase this was the servant staircase but you must remember there was no electricity in those days and the family hard a lamp man they bought him specially from london to light up the queen's way but adela tells us that the man deserted his duties and she wrote when my mother took the queen to her room she found the stairs in complete darkness my mother begged the queen to wait while she ran upstairs for a light but on returning to the head of the steps she found the queen had laughingly groped her way up behind her in the dark well imagine queen victoria stumbling up these steps without even a candle wearing the wide long dresses she was laughing she wasn't even upset but whichever staircase she used waiting for her in the bedroom was another surprise so typical of penryn's eccentricities the bed unusual sure it's made of solid slate looks just like the gray stuff down in the library i think probably made by a welsh crafts person more accustomed to making greystones just look at the shape and form of that footboard but did the queen actually sleep in it well there's some controversy here some say she did some say she thought it was ghoulish and ordered another bed what do i think personally well let's sleep on it wherever she ended up sleeping if victoria needed anything during the night all she had to do was ring for it as the upstairs rooms were all linked to the servant's quarters by these bell pools how's that victorian room service but there's one call that no servant wanted to hear the call of nature clearing out the dreaded chamber pots yuck but here at penryn not everyone had to stoop that low i've snuck upstairs to see another one of the castles prized more cons that would have thrilled the guests and the staff alike well here's an invention that would have been a great relief to the servants of flashing loo now penryn was one of the first grand houses to actually incorporate it at the beginning of their construction we know that prince albert had an interest in technology and he would have been fascinated by this and he actually probably sat on it while albert was otherwise engaged upstairs downstairs the beef is roasting on the spit it makes my mouth water just looking at it most people when they think of spit cookery think of like campfire cookery but this is on a different level it's really sophisticated very flexible cookery timing is absolutely important so that you don't overdo it but also i see it almost while you're describing it it's actually very like a barbecue this is a high-end barbecue this is a high-end barbecue but that's it [Music] the spit or rotisserie was powered by a smoke jack rotated by heated air rising in the chimney it was a skilled job to make sure the joint was cooked at the correct distance from the fire and for the right amount of time while continually basting the meat in its own fat a lot of visitors to these old kitchens they see these extraordinary spits which are large and they think well they must have roasted a whole pig or an oxen on it but that's not the case because victorian meal had lots of roast meats at different intervals in the meal so what that's for is for cooking lots of different types of meat rather than one great big massive ox and of course it's all about control you've always got one cook in charge of that who's keeping his or her eye on it tended to be a male it was barbecue mannequin in the victorian incarnation of the sentence but he knows to a turn exactly when it's cooked so he is now called the spit cooker the rotisserie cooking the rotisserie cook in the 19th century yeah they took the french term for it so why is there a screen there well it's hot work it looks like there's a wardrobe plant in the middle of the kitchen it's the most essential piece of equipment that protects all of us from the heat it reflects the heat back into the fire because it's coated with the tin interior and you can also use it for warming up your plates this is original oh yes yeah it's called a closet or a screen every kitchen had one so we've got our meat but what about the veg to go with the beef we're going to make stuffed tomatoes we're going to put them under the fire to finish so they have the juices of the meat delicious which is something we've forgotten all about but people don't want to eat fat anymore and that's where all the flavor is absolutely what it's all about isn't it time to fry up the stuffing i love this combination of bacon onion and thyme and garlic have you got some garlic there's a little bit remember this is a la provence hello this wonderful ham which is the dry english ham that you would get from the smoking loft here in the in in the kitchen it's like a serrano it's it's it's superb it's english you say we you know how is to make this stuff hundreds oh that's delicious it's superb isn't it oh so you've got ham here from the bacon loft bacon also made here on the estate herbs from the herb garden mushrooms feel gathered oh fabulous so the whole kitchen is completely self-sufficient no supermarkets no absolutely wonderful while the meat cooks away on the spit i'll leave ivan to stuff the tomatoes so i can try and find some of the other key rooms in a labyrinth below the stairs [Music] after a whirlwind welcome the queen must have slept like a baby she woke the next morning to this magnificent view from her window which she wrote reminded her of the highlands [Music] on queen victoria's first morning here in 1859 she went for a walk with her children despite the inclement weather i bet it was blowy like today albert on the other hand shoved off to the quarry the source of so much of that penant wealth victoria didn't bother going this time because she'd already seen it during her earlier trip in 1832 this painting was done after that visit and she's meant to be one of the figures in there somewhere [Music] was she secretly into abseiling victoria described her experiences here outside in her diary she writes walked out after breakfast with the children in the grounds visiting the fine flower and kitchen gardens but felt so tired the atmosphere so thick dull and heavy so different than balmoral that i did not go far she did however leave her mark by planting a giant redwood tree which we can see just there victoria planted trees like they were going out of fashion but the pennants made quite sure this one was a bit special this giant redwood would have been imported from america they grow to over 100 meters tall and can live for over 3 000 years so as far as a lasting legacy of the royal visit goes it doesn't get much better than this downstairs while ivan's placing the stuffed tomatoes under the spit so they become infused by the juices dripping off the beef i'm off exploring it's clear that the kitchen is one of the most important rooms downstairs but a whole suite of rooms played a huge part in feeding them upstairs but it's a pastry room i've had my eye on all day and it's not these delicious victorian cakes that have taken my fancy but something that might appear far more mundane one of the most exciting things here is actually a bread roll now this bread roll was one of the original bread rolls that was baked for queen victoria on her three-day visit here to penryn i have to be very careful because if it breaks i will be in a lot of trouble i'm going to leave this right where it is i don't want ivan making croutons out of this victorian treasure back in the kitchen we're now ready for the final stage in preparing today's wonderful royal dish beef provencal spectacular the beef has cooked for two hours and is ready to dress we've got to get it off the spirit the succulent beef is removed from the hot spit but that's not enough for queen victoria the garnish is even more amazing and not a lettuce leaf in sight we're going to use these wonderful skewers yes which are called hatalay skewers yes and we will probably put one in the middle that doesn't have anything on it so we'll put that one in like that right and what we need to do is to put a truffle right shall i put one yeah if you start put these a whole do you have a smell of those they're absolutely amazing fantastic okay and then one of the smaller crayfish now this is quite difficult you've got to get it through the middle of its back like that okay like so now push it right down so it's on top right okay then you want a gherkin right to do this and then finally the mushroom this may all seem a bit old tt but in victorian times food was a way to prove your status so the garnish was almost as important as the beef itself okay got it that's it okay that looked magnificent yeah all we've got to do is surround it with the tomatoes and it's ready for the dining room can't wait the tomatoes have been stuffed and are toasted under this special spade known as a salamander and finally cooked through on the gratin dish it's almost architecture in a way is to just sort of making sure it's well balanced yeah i mean this is not campfire cooker is it i mean we're on a completely different level here this is really very sophisticated extremely yeah should we put the sauce on i'm just going to glaze this a little bit of your meat glaze this looks incredible but imagine the pressure creating a dish like this especially if queen victoria was waiting upstairs it's bad enough that it's time well that is beautiful and i think tim is going to love this [Music] it had been a long old day for victoria and to finish it off she had a dinner party to get through staged in this room the queen described it as very handsome with everything well done and she says the dinner was excellent wow oh rosemary you have been busy darling now this is a wonderful philadelphia la provenceau and why do you think it's called provencal because it comes from the country it's a little bit of garlic ah is that what it is that's what it is i can't tell tim this but i've already sneaked to taste before serving him and it is amazing i can tell you spit roasting is as far away from a barbie as you can imagine now this is a typical dish that actually queen victoria might have eaten but it was only part of a whole host of dishes she would have got through actually i feel a bit of a dribble coming on because that looks that looks really good i'm going to give you that um can i have a tomato too yes oh yes are they stuffed with mushrooms onions yes garlic garlic oh good i'm glad i'm sleeping with myself tonight now here we go look i'm going to have a morsel of this delicious provencar beef that you have slaved away at you are an angel now one two three down the cake hole [Music] core and that is cooked on the spit and it's larded to give it moisture it's absolutely delicious i mean this is sophisticated food and to think they had this sort of food then to me this is top quality restaurant food certainly is and do you know how tall victoria was no how tall was she about five foot two and do you know how wide she was how wide 48 inches around her middle and about 53 inches tall oh well then that's hoop huh so rosemary after a splendid dinner like this there would be suitable entertainment from the quarry men's choir shall we coral singing was hugely popular in wales during victoria's reign [Music] and here a choir assembled and conducted by one of the quarry workers performed for the queen and among those here today are some of the descendants that sang with that very choir do you know rosemary queen victoria really loved the quarry men and she wrote in her diary they have such fine voice they sing in such fine june just like our penryn male voice choir here [Music] magnificent absolutely right and what more fitting way for us to conclude our visit to penryn castle next time we catch up with victoria at floors castle in scotland and everything has changed the queen was in mourning after the death of her beloved albert and it was the first time in six years she had left home on an official duty [Music] you

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 86,802

Rating: 4.8880639 out of 5

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, surfandturf, royal cooking, queen victoria, royal kitchens, british history, victorian cuisine

Id: 1YGgwM8P-LE

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020