Prince Albert's Favourite Pudding | Royal Upstairs Downstairs | Real Royalty

how do you prepare for the arrival of a queen and not just any old queen victoria like a couple of victoria groupers we're pursuing her around the country to the magnificent mansion she visited we'll be delving into her personal diaries to reveal what happened behind closed doors today we're visiting wimpo hall in cambridgeshire victoria came here with albert in 1843 she was 24 years of age and had been on the throne for six years as someone who spent a lifetime exploring country houses are the upstairs discovering some mod cons that might have excited victoria i love it don't you look gas off or sunlight and as a chef who loves great food i'll be recreating an amazing victorian pudding lift it up very very gently fantastic what will my own prince make of it looks positively naughty [Music] here at wimpole hall we're only 10 miles from cambridge with its hallowed halls academic life and famous university which is where victoria and albert had been visiting in october 1843 before coming on to wimpole albert had just received an honorary degree from trinity college cambridge this greatly pleased victoria as a sign that albert was starting to be accepted by her subjects but in her diary she records that she wasn't pleased by the crowds who fought to get a glimpse of the celebrity couple poor exhausted victoria said that the crowds in cambridge were awful they were looking forward to a relaxing time at wimpole peace and quiet though very hard to come by because here at wimpole hall they were in for a rollicking time of dancing eating and even a visit to the farm i'm going to find out how the poor servants coped with the royal onslaught i'm going to find out how the royal guests fed upstairs this rather lovely red brick pile dates back to the mid mid-17th century a couple of hundred years before victoria and albert's visit the hosts to the royal party were the fourth earl and contest of hardwick he was a vice admiral in the navy and had been nicknamed old blowhard we don't know how he and victoria got to know each other but we do know that she held him in high regard victoria was obviously fond of her host here at wimpole indeed the year before the visit she wrote lord hardwick the queen that's me likes very much he seems so straightforward he was clearly a man that she felt that she could trust and he did like everything absolutely shipshape for example over there is the charming meandering snaky old drive approaching the house which shows off its elongated frontage to best advantage the trouble was victoria and albert were coming here from cambridge over there and so that they didn't have to spend that extra mile on the turnpike he had another driveway charged straight through his park so that they could get here easier which is now being grassed over and after the visit he named it victoria drive well having splashed the cash i guess you can't really blame him for advertising the fact that the queen had come to call the host old blowhard's ship shape approach even extended downstairs where the queen wouldn't see at the heart of every great house is the housekeeper sitting room where she would guard over her stores this is one of the best preserved stores i have ever seen look at the spices the teas all this was incredibly valuable she must have kept it under lock and key [Music] being in this room you get a real feeling of just how important the housekeeper was sitting in this chair she could see who was coming and going but the key thing is the toughs don't know they're being watched despite the hall's rigid upstairs downstairs etiquette this wonderful book shows just how closely the earl and his senior servant the house steward france's heart worked together in it they recorded every detail of life at wimpole including victoria's visit by the time the queen finally arrived here at about 5 p.m the house steward records it was so dark on her entering the park that lamps placed it intervals and at the steps were lit so our man the earl wanted to make quite sure the house was looking at its best fine but i wonder whether victoria actually noticed because her journal makes no mention of it she merely writes using the old-fashioned use of the term i felt knocked up and somewhat tired hmm to make sure those upstairs enjoyed their visit downstairs had to be well organized and at wimpo this is the corridor of power this is the woman's end of the service quarters the housekeeper was in charge the kitchen's back there the maids are through here and in here is the servants dining room where the men and women came together to eat and this is the butler's domain where butlering today is our food historian ivan day come in hello ivan am i allowed in here this is the men's quarters just this once so what was this room used for well this is the bachelor's pantry which was really the control center for all the male servants in the household because the butler was their boss and he gave them their orders at the beginning of each day so this would be a hive of activity especially with the grand occasion like a royal visit because he looked after the major investments of the owner of the house which was all the valuable wine in the wine cellar but also all of the plate and the porcelain that was his responsibility the servants rooms down here are very much men at one end women at the other the bedrooms where the maids all sleep which are very tiny and very basic are as far away as possible from the bedrooms where all of the grooms and the and the footwork just keep them and to get to them you'd have to get past the housekeeper or the stuart or the butler and they would reprimand you if you went anywhere near them so they couldn't get up to any naughty business then well there was that yeah i mean one of the big problems often you got in a big house like this was pilfering and the wine here for instance is not only guarded by the butler but you to get to it you'd have to go through the stewart's room the stewart is that the major servant who runs the whole estate and the butler and the housekeeper although they're senior servants they have to answer to him and he was a real boss but the housekeeper was in charge of the female line of servants and the butler looked after all of the men and so you had these two lines of orders so they were equal in status she's the top of the women and he's the top of the men but not equal in pay but both with equal responsibility absolutely yes one of the butler's many tasks was to supervise the cleaning of the silver and in posh country houses they made their own silver cleaner from some surprising ingredients they used to burn deer antlers really and the hooves and calcium and you get something which is was called hearts horn which was in fact ammonium carbonate which is a very caustic and alkaline substance but it cleans all the oxide and tarnish of the silver let me see if i can see my face in it i can actually you've been polishing very well as well as shiny silver the earl wanted the whole house to impress victoria but there was a bit of a problem at its heart when paul was around 200 years old when victoria visited so the reception rooms are modest in size as was the fashion when they were built so the earl had a special room ready for victoria and albert's dinner on the first night the yellow drawing room and you can understand why he chose this room there is a sense of grandeur about it indeed drama and that's because 50 years before victoria's visit the fourth earl's predecessor this chap the third earl made the room dramatically bigger but because it's in the middle of the house he couldn't go out so he went up he knocked out the floor above and squeezed this elegant dome into the old structure and just to be absolutely sure the room pass master our man the fourth isle redecorated just before victoria arrived it must have looked absolutely radiant [Music] now this room has one other special feature in that very dome one of the houses two ventilating gas lights this was the cutting edge technology of the era fed from a gas works on the estate and especially designed to draw the vapors from a room out through the chimney above the ventilating gas light was regulated using this charming brass dial i love it don't you look gas off full-on or sunlight what a wonderful term to describe what would be no doubt just a warm glow from way out there in the cupola historians have wondered whether they were installed especially for victoria's visit but i think it's unlikely in the 1840s gas lighting was still very new and was considered rather common by the upper classes one thing is certain dinner for victoria on her first night was meant to be anything but common but despite all the meticulous preparations for the royal dinner things did not go exactly to plan the table was laid up for 24 people all the great and the good of the county were here so it was a pretty snug fit but things were due to get a whole lot snugger in the house records the earl's steward writes that on the pretense of helping to serve dinner the servants of the other house guests elbowed their way into the dining room he says it were not good at this point the fact was the servants of the guests got in being curious to see the queen and through lord aardwick's servants into a complete confusion so the poor old earl's meticulous plans went down the toilet now where's that rosemary hi actually tim we servants are about to cook your supper i'm lining a mold with soft butter in preparation for a dessert that was incredibly popular at the time of victoria's visit here steamed cabinet pudding we're going to cut up some little pieces of these glace cherries and you're going to stick them around the mold in a nice regular pattern that is very thick of butter perfect it's got to act as a glue yes but also as a releasing agent so that we do get the pudding out these are dried cherries and something the housekeeper would be keeping in her room exactly yes just like the butler kept his his wine in the wine cellar she kept all of her dry goods in the dry last yes yes and of course we would now call these glasses cherries so i'm just going to pop it in the cherries are placed in a regular pattern all around the mold this posh victorian cooking is so intricate imagine how nerve-wracking it would have been knowing that victoria was the person you were making it for [Music] i'm going to put it in the ice over here the ice will make the butter solidify and those cherries will be absolutely stuck on the surface absolutely otherwise they'll slip down weren't they next some chopped homemade candied lemon peel that is wonderful straight off the tree into the syrup so it's really really fresh am i doing these the right size that's absolutely perfect okay good the butter has solidified holding the cherries firmly in place now we fill the mold with layers of crumbled sponge cakes macaroons and ratafiers little almond biscuits we can carefully fill it so it's about right those are perfect yeah so if you put a little layer in a stop because you need to put in a little bit of peel now so we're going to build a layer of sponge a layer of macaroon and ratafia probably got more than enough there i'll put a bit of peel in next we make a custard with half a pint of full cream milk half a pint of fresh cream one and a half ounces of sugar and finally three whole eggs and one egg yolk and then you can beat it but just generally we don't need to whip it up into a froth or anything like that well that's just a lovely custard it's one of the most favorite flavors of victorian period i'm sure that queen victoria would have loved it now we pour the custard carefully into the mold all of that lovely custard will just soak in to those wonderful ratafiers and the sponge and the macaroons we need to let that settle because all of that custard will just get sucked in by all the holes that's right and did you know that sponge was was called that because originally sponge biscuits were for dipping into wine and soaking up the wine i never knew that i just put the rest of that in rosemary it's soaked for a while now so i think it will probably be settled if i take the mold out let me get hold of it first right you get that ice out of the way i'll put that down there could you put the lid on while i just hold it instead you'll have to sort of turn it around a bit yeah it's fitted beautifully then right we'll just let that rest for about 20 minutes right and then straight into the steamer there's another first-hand account of victoria's visit to wimpole from her young maid of honor elena stanley on the morning of victoria's second day here as the clock struck nine victorious hailed through the entrance hall to the chapel she was going to her morning prayers except those servants were about to cause another hiccup down there the chapel was full of servants why well eleanor victoria's maid of honor reckons that the household hadn't cleared the servants because having no notice that she was coming in at all and no idea that she would walk straight into the chapel without saying a word to anybody so victoria found herself confronted with a chapel full of servants how distressing i know the feeling oi what are you doing down there well tim it's not my fault this chapel was also used by the domestic staff to assemble in the morning to receive their orders of the day the bells are nearby so if they ring they could scurry off really quickly which is exactly where i'm going can't be seen enough for me anyway the faux pas was not grave the queen simply shrugged it off and laughed and her cheeky maid records it was all her own fault for not giving notice of her intentions but if she ever did get a moment in this room she would have been swept away by its beauty the lavish baroque decoration dates from the 1720s and it's full of visual trickery all of the architecture above the paneling is actually magnificent trump lee painted effects giving the 3d impression of depth light and shadow having created these images the artist wanted to make quite sure everyone knew who'd done such a good paint job no indistinct miserable little squiggle of a signature in one corner of the room for this artist oh no for sir james thornhill it's boulder's brass above the door well they do say it pays to advertise [Music] in large country houses like wimpole those of us downstairs had to remain invisible to the dofs so some doors had a special surface to make sure no servants wandered into the wrong room by accident now this is really interesting imagine you've got up a five o'clock in the morning really early really tired and just dark around the place and you come to this door and you're feeling it and you feel these rave stunts this is a warning there's someone on the other side who doesn't want to see you victoria's host the fourth earl of hardwick wasn't only a sailor but also a great farming enthusiast this is home farm a model farm built by the earl's father we know the royal couple came here during their stay because in her diary victoria records we walked to the farm which is beautiful and there was a heifer being fathered a great beauty also young carbs pigs and fowls albert was interested in examining the various plows typical bloke eh the current farm manager richard morris explains why this model farm was set up he was a chap who was interested in our culture and our cultural improvement and he looked around the country and he wanted to bring the ideas home to show his farm managers and his tenants so we got sir johnson wants to design the farm they built it here and they brought back they brought back the quality of stock and they brought in the mechanization and then they brought in neighbours tenants managers to learn about best practice we know from victoria's diary that she came down to the farm is this the sort of beast that she would have seen down here at that time definitely this is an english longhorn developed late 1700s by farmers who realized that there were genetics in animals that had the potential to to produce a lot more food so they started cross-breeding and this stuff is a result of that breeding and these slowly spread through the whole country during the next 30 40 years so he will have been about at the time but in agriculture things were all changing in the 1840s and 1850s in britain weren't they it was an unbelievably exciting time to be involved in that culture everything was changing the genetics of the animals the development of breeds species of crops that were grown in the field the sort of agronomy that was used to increase those yields of those crops and also mechanization played a massive part in the growth of the sort of output of farms and profit and this is before we get steam traction engines and all the rest of it because they're here in the 1850s aren't they that's right we we know from documented evidence that a static steam engine was put in our wood yard here by 1851 undoubtedly before that the mobile steam engines will have started to come in and do jobs like thrashing of the corn victoria does record seeing the fathering of a show heifer for smithfield what exactly did that mean uh well to spare her blushes it actually meant that the heifer was being put in calf by a ball being mounted back mounted by a big chap like this yes can i keep moses uh that would be quite a sight wouldn't it it's quite impressive and it happens quite quickly does it yes for the heavens benefit well that's a relief for victoria perhaps victoria and albert took some inspiration from their visit here because within two short years they had set up their very own model farm at osborne house on the isle of wight how sweet back in the butler's pantry our cabinet pudding has now been steamed i've taken it out of the saucepan and i've let it rest for about 20 minutes so if you could just gently pull that off it should come off right here i think i have to do it down here on the floor i'll hold it steady for you well done got it right now hopefully that looks pretty good doesn't it that looks pretty good what are we going to do is kind of um shall i just like that trick no you don't invert that over it okay and then if you just go like that i'll slide it into the middle ah no okay now this is very just let it rest for a little while gravity will do this trip we hope there's a lord up there waiting and a queen waiting for their pudding if i can't get this out we've got scrambled egg so i'm going to pray to the pudding god and just hope that we managed to do it just give it a very gentle little shake can you feel it glooping out yeah is it coming just give it a little shake rose i mean that's it hey it's coming yes lift it up very very very gently [Music] to go with a cabinet pudding a rich sauce made with rum brandy white wine orange and lemon a real adult extra it will lift this very delicate pudding into the realms of an alcoholic dream it will be wonderful for you one victorian pudding ready to serve this was supposed to be a relaxing break for victoria and albert but on the second night this room hosted an event which the earl simply asked a few close mates to for an ease up 300 close mates actually it may well be one of the finest libraries of any house in the country but i bet as guests parted away they went looking at the books the times of the day records that by 9 30 p.m the line of carriages arriving at the house could not have extended less than two miles there was a two mile q back it was raining heavily just like today with a boisterous wind just like today and by the time they got inside past a line of guardsmen who'd been drafted in as bouncers on the door they would have been in need of a jolly good drink now you're talking my language victoria and albert arrived downstairs in this room at 10 pm victoria looked resplendent in a yellow brocade dress with a wreath of roses in her hair the guests no doubt were very excited and in awe at the close proximity with which they found themselves to their monarch but for one poor young chap victoria was about to get too close for comfort the party moved into the long room to dance there's a story about one unfortunate chap called caledon who was thrown into a complete panic when he was told that he was scheduled to dance with her majesty caledon begged his cousin the magnificently named balcares dalrymple ward law ramsey for a crash course in the dance steps so the two lads nicked a bottle of champagne snuck off into an adjoining room and ransay records the perspiration running down caledon's face and tossing the champagne down his throat he at last heard his doom called out lord caledon lord calendar the queen's dance it seems that lord hardwick had noticed the poor boy's blind terror and had tipped the wink to queen victoria who was already on the dance floor because according to ramsay she laughed heartily when caledon came up looking like a male factor being led for his execution port chap and after the earl had invited 300 people to his house for such a grand event victoria merely writes in her diary that it was a very pretty little ball i think i'd be a bit peeved if that's all victoria said if i'd gone to all that trouble not as peeved as i'll be if you don't like my victorian cabinet pudding what is this half a cannon ball now this is called a cabinet pudding done with rafter biscuits sponge soaked up with a custard and put some lovely lemon peel in there and some cherries on the outside as you see but this is not quite finished yet we're gonna pour some incredibly alcoholic sauce over the top which has in it some wine some brandy some rum oh yes orange and lemon and i'm just going to pour it over so it really soaks it all up looks positively naughty i have to say well in the victorian times you know they were naughty they put alcohol in so many things i'm actually going to serve you some of this now i have to pull the alcohol over because i like the thing i know you do more juicy oh look at it no no double greedy all right right now i'm going to take a little bit for myself listen to you a little bit of yourself i'm not sure the cook hasn't already been on the sauce if you don't mind saying so come on tim try it stand by for this is smoke going to come out of my ears i tell you what's so good is that out of this alcohol you get fantastic fruits oh i rather like eating my alcohol though it makes such a change to pouring it down the throat in another way brilliant wonderful [Music] next time on royal upstairs downstairs we'll be at beaver castle where victoria continues her campaign to improve albert's image with a pr stunt at the castle's hunt and do you think they all came to watch albert fall off i think that's always at the back of hunting people's mind [Music] so you

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 130,617

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, royal cooking, prince albert, cabinet pudding, victorian baking, royal kitchens, victorian dining, victorian royalty

Id: ujIhvx1qZRk

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020