Queen Victoria To Henry VIII: The Most Lavish Royal Meals In History | Royal Recipes | Real Royalty

i'm alice loxton and i present documentaries over on history hit tv if you're passionate about all things royal history sign up to history hit tv it's like netflix but just for history you've got hours of ad-free documentaries about all aspects of the past you can get a huge discount for history hit tv make sure you check out the details in the video description and use the code real royalty all one word when you sign up now on with the show [Music] royal food served on the grandest tables is so much more than just a meal historically these extravagant dishes were created to represent power they also set fashions nowadays royal food is all about showcasing the best of british in celebration of royal food we know it's the queen's recipe because we've got it in our own hand from the present and the past that is proper regal we recreate old family favorites now the queen mother had this really wicked trick with these what a mess we sample royal eating alfresco oh wow that is what you want and revisit the most extravagant times pheasants stag turkey salmon oysters and turbot dressed in a lobster champagne sauce unbelievable this is royal recipes [Music] hello i'm michael burke and welcome to royal recipes this is ordly end one of britain's finest stately homes built in the style of a royal palace and once owned by a king in the splendor of the gardens halls and kitchen of this grandest of country houses we'll be recreating the food served at the highest royal tables and it all starts here with this gem a royal kitchen maids cookbook the only surviving recipe book of its kind in the royal archive this is an exact copy of the original which is kept at windsor castle inside the recipes of mildred nichols who worked at buckingham palace in the early 1900s and for the first time in over a hundred years we'll be bringing these recipes back to life [Music] this time we're cooking royal recipes inspired by the days of india and empire historian dr annie gray heads to the isle of wight to discover how queen victoria's passion for the raj got us all hooked on indian food but it's fair to say that queen victoria was one of the people to elevate curry to something that truly was fit for a queen the chef who was called to buckingham palace to create dishes for the indian president i got massive feedback from the guests and and the royalty as well and chef paul ainsworth cooks up curry prince harry's style prince harry had this stuff when he was serving in afghanistan and the gurkhas they'd cook up [Music] in the historic kitchen wing we're returning to the reign of queen victoria and the indian dishes served on her menus we're here in the magnificent old kitchen with the magnificent old paul ainsworth michelle star chef two british greats yes yeah queen victoria queen victoria and the indian takeaway and the popularity of the one owes an awful lot to the popularity of her she loved curry's didn't she yeah yeah and you're gonna cook one of her favorite recipes yeah one that she really enjoyed which is a quail and potato curry and it's absolutely delicious and really simple in the royal archives it's uh where we got the recipe it's they don't call it that i have to say it the takeaway so what i've done here michael is we're going to get going straight away with a lovely base so we've got some onions that we've cooked in butter ghee just clarified butter it's a lovely flavor and the temperature gets nice and hot i've added in the curry powder first because i want to cook that out so it's not gritty we want to really cook that curry i'm using curry powder curry powder sheet isn't it well not really well you've we've got to use a spice yeah so um the cheat would be getting the jar we're making our base from scratch so we've got our garlic in there our chili our curry powder and our lovely caramelized onions so now we're just going to turn that heat up turn that heat up a little bit really get going some grated ginger absolutely delicious nice and fragrant i'm just going to grate that in there like so but the key to it is the sauce isn't it the key to actually curry it comes from the indian uh curry which i think means sauce now this is a really important part of this dish this is what gives us that wonderful color of the sauce and tomatoes i mean for me they play a massive role in cookery itself because they're just so delicious and that's what gives us that real body and depth wonderful acidity nice sweetness so you can see already we've got this wonderful base starting to starting to form together so now we're going to add in water not stock because we've got that wonderful flavor bring that to the boil and then we're going to add the legs michael the legs first yeah the legs are super super tender but they need cooking before the breasts if you think with most animals michael you've got like say duck chicken uh you need to put the legs first because they're gonna cook down because they're the bit on the animal that worked the most and that's it that's our sauce so now we would leave that to simmer for about an hour hour and ten minutes and those legs would be beautiful and tender and it's pretty exotic for royal food isn't it the queen is queen victoria really had very exotic taste they called her the greedy queen i think because she liked all this kind of stuff well it is it and it really is a delicious recipe so michael after an hour of really slow cooking in gentle gentle simmer these are our legs that we've done earlier right okay and we're just going to pick the meat off and in the meantime it's falling off falling off absolutely delicious and in the meantime we then blitz this wonderful sauce that we've made and what's what's beautiful is that now we've got this lovely sauce so can i get you to grate me an apple please yeah and then grate it so bit by bit michael i'm gonna add in my beautiful quail leg meat here we go we're gonna add in our breasts like so and if the sauce gets too thick just let it down with a little bit of water okay you're using water all the time rather than starting absolutely yeah water's so important in cooking really important because it's nice and neutral and sometimes you don't want to confuse flavors now you can start to see it's coming together becoming beautiful and thick going to add in our potatoes now these potatoes have just been partly cooked what about the breasts how long do they do breasts will just literally take a couple of minutes really yeah because they're so thin and the potatoes are just taking on that wonderful flavor now if we just take a bit of your apple there it is okay perfectly done isn't it all we're going to do is just grate great smell it is perfectly done absolutely now the apple is giving you fragrance yeah acidity delicious especially like a lovely english apple like this like the bramley it's a beautiful clean taste isn't it and look the juices of the apple as well yeah i mean it really is a delicious curry now that there is cooked believe it or not we are cooked with those are cooked we've got some just a couple minutes just a couple of minutes you've got two pots on there paul what's in what what's in the side dishes you can't have a beautiful curry without some lovely side dishes so in here got some wonderful spinach pinch of salt butter it produces its own steamed spinach because it's got so much water there's a lot of vegetables over 80 percent water nothing just in naturally and you can see we'll just turn it over see like that michael and it's just literally wilting down delicious vegetable spinach full of iron and then of course you can't have a curry without rice we've got some wonderful just some wonderful steamed rice okay is it ready yeah let's chop some coriander let's chop some coriander and we're good to go excellent okay so a bit of finger plenty yeah plenty of plenty of herbs and now we're just going to move that over here and fold it in and let's plate up if you just stir that in gently for me i'm going to get the i'm going to get the side dishes ready so we've got our wonderful steamed rice our lovely spinach it's good to be right over it isn't it absolutely okay let's plate up so we're gonna have some lovely spinach do you do much indian food yourself yeah i do especially stuff like this i mean this would be great to do at home with the family and i love do you know what i love about indian food i love the way that i love the way that you eat like this sharing round the table everyone getting stuck in passing food around so we've got that lovely rice it is extraordinary isn't it would you think that our national dish is kind of inherited from the subcontinent this is my favorite style of car i mean look at that abs and you don't want it sloshing around no no you don't you don't and when you did the legs and the breasts separately does that mean that they're going to taste like different meats yeah because you've got that lovely braised leg but then the texture of that breast will be just almost like a like a steak texture yeah are you ready to taste it yeah some lovely rice like so get some it's just the smell you see those potatoes just slightly soft as well cooked all the way through nice nice bit of breast there on top and that lovely deep green spinach and there we are there we go quail and potato curry do have some of yourself paul thank you it's very kind to you oh it's good isn't it oh it's so deep it's it's it is i keep saying it but it's the acidity yeah it's those tomatoes yeah apple yep yep there is that yeah a lovely bit of acidity but they're really round deep and i love the potatoes because they've just sucked up all that flavour happy no wow um were queen victoria approved when you finished queen victoria would have been amused thank you quail and potato curry created for victoria queen of england and empress of india there's no better place to explore victoria's passion for india than at osborne house the royal family's retreat on the isle of wight as dr annie gray explains it's here that she chose to showcase the imagined glamour of the raj queen victoria never actually went to india instead she had india brought to england in the shape of this room the derbar room which was constructed to expand the palace and give her entertaining space but i think if i'd been present at one of those entertainments i'd have struggled to keep my attention on what was going on on the stage because my jaw would be too busy hitting my chest as i ogled all this incredible decoration designed by prominent indian architects of the time the room is like a maharaja's palace full of elaborate indian craftsmanship and symbolic motifs and victoria's homage to the subcontinent didn't stop here [Music] in 1887 a cross came the first of what would prove to be a procession of indian servants and they came across to be personal attendance to the queen the indian servants were seen as exotic imports they were beautiful resplendent standing beside the queen but the household did not exactly welcome them in the main most of them were accepted but one man in particular grew to be one of the queen's most hated servants he was called abdul karim also known as the munchie and in the later years of the queen's life he was one of her closest confidants and friends she elevated him from the position of a mere personal attendant and made him into her close personal secretary one of her attendants did suggest that the reason she liked him so much was because he annoyed the rest of the household so much and as the queen grew older she needed to inject a bit of excitement in her life he may well have been right the indian cooks weren't much liked either they introduced victoria to authentic indian cuisine and as a result the kitchens at osborne had to accommodate their ways of working we know from the diaries and memoirs of gabrielle shumi who was one of the apprentices in the kitchen at the time that the indian cook or cooks had their own ingredients sent to them live animals presumably to be butchered by them in the way they deemed fit and also whole spices shumi was very sniffy about this habit of grinding their own spices from fresh he said that the royal kitchens were very well provided for with the best quality curry powder so why on earth would these cooks from india need to grind their own but grind then they did and it appears that the food they produced met with queen victoria's satisfaction and the words indian dish appeared regularly on her menus in the 1880s and 1890s her favorite curries were usually chicken or fish and her passion for this cuisine fired up the taste buds of the nation but it's fair to say that queen victoria was one of the people to elevate curry or at least indian food from being a mere leftover dish beloved of the middle classes to something that truly was fit for a queen [Music] victoria is said to have eaten dishes cooked by her indian chef most sundays and tuesdays the same can't be said for the rest of the household although osborne house was designed primarily as a private residence certain hierarchies still had to be maintained and that meant that everybody ate separately this was the queen's dining room the queen would have a menu comprising of all of the best kind of dishes and sometimes that all-important indian dish the authentic curry which she liked to eat the household would have a very very similar menu but they never had that curry that was reserved for the queen and her nearest and dearest only so one can imagine perhaps the lower servants from time to time looking at the menus for those above them and thinking ah i just wish i could have a little bit of that rather fancy indian chicken dish the relationship between royalty and indian food continues today an indian chef atul kucha is one of the latest chefs to work with the royal family atoll is one of britain's top indian chefs [Music] he's worked closely with prince charles and has also been called upon by the queen when she entertained guests from the subcontinent okay guys get on with it thank you when the president of india was the guest of her majesty atoll was invited to assist the chefs at buckingham palace as they prepared the menu for the state visit seabass was one of the dishes pan-fried sea bass mussels a great coconut sauce called moili and a masala mash when president of india was visiting the united kingdom i was invited to cook this dish i felt very honored and this recipe has become a kind of recipe close to my heart which i absolutely adore and i cook it time and time again so let's make the sauce first so we start with mustard seeds and they crackle immediately some sliced garlic and i also like to add a little bit of ginger and some shallots i got congratulated for my recipes i was very very happy i need green chili and the way i like to use my chili is i remove the seeds because they have all the heat with his inside knowledge of the royal taste buds atoll could get his spicing spot on prioritizing flavor rather than heat when i have such a high profile function to cater for and especially cooking in england not everyone is fond of green chillies or red chillies so i took the heat out and that way i have the flavor but not the heat turmeric coconut milk and that goes in [Music] and i'll add a pinch of salt in this now believe it or not my sauce is ready so masala mash it's really easy same ingredients but different results so i've just added mustard seeds to the pan followed by a little bit of garlic add few curry leaves some chopped ginger and i got mashed potatoes which go in i know the royal family is not keen on garlic so whenever i'm cooking for them the garlic is off the recipe it's very simple that's how you handle it i also like to add a dash of red chili and a small pinch of turmeric some butter it's a really simple recipe okay must taste it before i set it aside beautiful and that's looking really good because that's done and we can go and pan fry our fish i'm pressing the fish down so that it remains flat and nice and fan frying fish what you want to achieve out of it is a of course you want to cook it but also you want to achieve the skin to be absolutely crisp and nice so for that what we do as a chef i would watch that how the meat is getting cooked the protein of the fish it starts becoming opaque and starts traveling towards the center of the fish when it's right in the middle that's the time i know the skin is absolutely crisp i'll flip it over and follow the recipe beyond that just to double check i will lift it slightly and see okay that's actually beautiful from here i would need to add the muscles quickly in the pan four or five muscles would do a blob of butter it's a complex dish and takes a bit of skilled organization to serve on a grand scale when we do this for a special banquet where you're feeding 300 people so obviously it's a it's a conveyor belt okay and large number of chefs helping you you're not doing it alone i think the fish is beautifully cooked all i'm gonna do is just take the fish away and leave the mussels in the pan for another few seconds and take and we are ready to plate that goes right in the center few muscles you can put them aside so the potato mash also goes a muscle can rest on it pan-fried sea bass mussels a masala mash and a beautiful coconut moilee sauce it's as simple as that now i was incredibly happy the way this dish went the way people liked it i got massive feedback from the guests and and the royalty as well [Music] that all went down really well he's hot stuff isn't it he's at all is the spice master he really is right what are you cooking prince harry loves fiery goat curry so we're going to cook a dish this is the one he learned from the gurkhas absolutely and we're going to cook a dish inspired by that so here we have um some onions cooking down and in nepalese cookery they love to really darken the onions and it's fantastic and what happens you get real deep flavors so you see here michael the reason they're going to see all that that is pure flavour that's the sugars that come out the onion they caramelise and that's how the onions get nice and dark no apparently prince harry had this had this stuff when he was serving in afghanistan right he was a forward air controller and the gurkhas apparently provided cover you know guarded him while he was doing it during the day and at night they'd cook up fiery curry fascinating right so here we have garlic chili and ginger the smell is delicious lovely isn't it okay so we get that nice and blitzed up so it's lovely and fine yeah and straight away we're gonna get that cook down i do i love bitter i'm a blitzer right get that that's really brown those onions aren't they really yeah and caramelized flavor flavor yeah yeah you might say burnt we say caramelized okay so now we're cooking right over here this is really interesting and really kind of um important to this dish is when we dry fry the spices now just quickly as well can you see where we've where the juices came out of the garlic in the ginger see how now it's just kind of lifted that off yeah takes it even darker so again great base we have a smell but you can't get smells on television i know i know here we've got an array of amazing spices they've been previously dry fried yeah and the reason for that is spices contain oil so you just they dance they come alive and then you just let them cool and then blitz them again there's that blitz we've got some asafoetida we've got some beautiful clothes i've never heard of that yeah it's got like a nice kind of almost like an onion sort of taste to it yellow clove which is really interesting in this dish fenugreek so they have been dry fried left to cool and then blitz like that have a smell straight so again the flavors starting to work in this dish are amazing star anise wonderful wonderful kind of aniseed yeah it's gorgeous but it's really good like balls absolutely bay leaf just give them a little nick to let those oils come out yeah and cinnamon snap that and you can already see just very quickly we've got one beautiful base starting to come together absolutely wonderful here we go with those magic tomatoes full of acidity nice sweetness they go straight in so important in this type of cooking uh absolutely delicious get those all in there now onto our goat i have to tell you yeah i'm not mad on goats you're not yeah i've worked a lot in africa yeah and i ate a lot of goats this is the shoulder okay we're going to add that straight we've just browned it off previously and that's just again to get that lovely flavor yeah so we add that in because in india i think they talk about mutton and mutton curry and things but quite often it's not lamb it's actually goats yeah a really mature goat the reason why you wouldn't want to use like a really young goat like the kid in a recipe like this is because you've got so many flavors as you do with this type of cooking yeah you've got all of these spices and you would just lose it so you need something that's going to hold its own yeah and a kid would be too delicate absolutely in with the water like that don't with any recipes like this don't drown in the water just enough to cover you can add more but don't dilute that flavor could you do could you do this with lamb as well you could do this with lamb you could do this with beef and when you're cooking like this use those real working cuts shoulder stuff like that legs beautiful working cuts why are you calling working cut because it's the part the animal that works oh the animal's muscle yeah you know normally along the back are the tender cuts the legs the shoulders they're they're working cuts so they're the things that need cooking longer okay right so that's everything in the pan we're just going to put the lid on and get that in the oven fiery goat curry yes now are they just showing off or is it really going to be hot is it going to be a vindaloo it's not going to be a vindaloo because you've got lovely fragrant spices in there but it's gonna have a nice bit of a kick with a lovely chili powder there right onto the side dishes for me probably one of my most favorite salads and it's the kachumba you've got this lovely rich kind of curry and you want something to really clean the palette so you've got lovely clean cucumber tomatoes red onions some nice green chili some garam masala we're going to finish that with a little bit of lime and some fresh coriander so you can imagine rich hot and nice temperature contrast as well it's as easy as this make sure everything's quite thinly sliced because you don't want to be sort of big chunks of uh red onion okay just a light seasoning all right not too much that's a garam masala why are you putting that in there which it's just a lovely spice garam masala smell it oh yeah yeah and it's a clean taste a clean really really clean taste yeah okay some lime juice delicious okay some lovely coriander and then just you know we can be you can get your fingers in there for you michael i'll be very polite and just a nice gentle stir okay yep and what's that other dish you've got in front of your chamber so the traditional cucumber raita this is yogurt mint and apple and the apples because you've got the cucumber in the uh kachumber yeah the apple in there is delicious oh that's a lovely variety on the usual right isn't it right should we serve up i think we should yeah let's do it and over here is our delicious goat curry look at that snack that's the bit lifting the lid off putting that in the middle of the table yeah that is magnificent and you know what we'll do we'll just finish that with some more fresh coriander okay and we're just gonna now stir that in wonderful rich dark brown look at it it's honestly it's incredible okay now we're just gonna serve up yeah come on oh my word that looks good doesn't it it's delicious isn't it absolutely delicious do you know what there is an art as well to cook in to cooking meat like this as well it shouldn't be like falling apart that it's just kind of cooked within an inch of its life it should still have texture and still be chunky absolutely yeah would you like some cucumber i guess yes please i just like saying i know you do right bit of kachin before you michael yep okay nice bit of that lovely apple and mint raita yeah and there we have my inspired version of the fiery goat curry this is the first time i've had goat by choice by choice dig in there we go get stuck in oh i say it's good it's so rich it's beautiful a nice different tank on the on the right with the apple um bazooka yeah not that do you want something yeah it's i think like you say it's the richness and then you've got these these things here giving you the acidity and cutting through it all it's such a great dish i have to say prince harry has got good taste fiery goat curry is just one of a huge range of curries available to british people as well as princess the british passion for curry has grown and grown since the days of queen victoria so much so that anglo-indian cuisine is now considered to produce some of the best curries in the world brick lane in london's east end is a hot spot for british curry and home to a thriving bangladeshi community the driving force behind modern anglo-indian cuisine this is the onion stock this is just a little garam masala when leading restaurateur eenam ali arrived here from bangladesh in 1974 the restaurants may have been called indian but the food wasn't quite what enam was used to back home it was really different than i was shocked to see it's called indian restaurant indian curry house but they used to sell roast chicken peas the whole menu seventy percent was all english dish in the seventies the chefs started to adapt to authentic recipes to suit british tastes even inventing dishes then putting they included the famous chicken tikka masala that is creamy rather than spicy perfect for the british palette chicken tikka is actually from pakistan in bangladesh and india it was cooked in clay oven and and then when chicken tikka was sir people find it's too spicy too hot and then somebody said put some tomato puri put some cream or something sweet it's just amazing success story in britain so the i regarded it this is a british curry still number one dish in the country this new wave of indian curry houses started to serve their cuisine in a more recognizable way the papadom replaced bread and butter in this country when you go to any you know restaurant they serve you bread and butter so they come up with the idea papadum normally papadum vaccum is same as you maybe eat here picker of crisp the way of serving way of thinking is truly different than what i had actually back home so it was really shocking me and bombay aloo a potato curry dish replaced the chip i believe it's also idea come from when people keep on eating chips and the chips and they also may be asking for same question again can't you find something spicy can you find something different boom baloo was born and now one of the fastest selling in this country if you go to india ask for a boombayaloo they might not understand what is boom and the onion ring became the onion bhaji early 70s early 60s when they're making onion ring they come up with the idea of the similarity of pakura so what they do it chop the onion and making onion ring and the chop again and make this together and making a big cricket ball and put all the spices and everything in making onion bhaji the people who work in the curry industry in the first generation because of them we are here because of their idea today we selling onion bhaji to india papadum they start selling in india what a fascinating story even though i don't know who invented this i'd like to salute them because of them to the whole world is enjoying british curry by the late 1980s the first fine dining curry restaurants began to appear in the uk in 1989 enam opened larage one of the first to achieve michelle star status when i see my name listed on the michelin guide i was very honored and privileged and when i realized that the first generation was done still i can't run this restaurant without their contribution so i just thought i should stand up and say thank you to recognize people who contributed enormously in tribute to these innovative curry restaurateurs enam set up the british curry awards now the oscars of the curry world with 430 million viewers worldwide one of the most coveted awards is for best takeaway and it was recently won by a restaurant in brighton with no south asian heritage being received at the british currywalls and not when not being indian is is fabulous it feels like a huge celebration of indian cuisine and indian dining and it acknowledges everybody that's in the industry and animali has really pushed it forward and put it to the forefront of people's attention as well which is great and enam has also won recognition from the queen for his work promoting anglo-indian curry cuisine i'm very touched by that she honored me for got the mbe for contributing to the british career award the royal family definitely enjoy the real good career britain has so much to offer and people don't have to go to india for a curry they will come here it's official we're a nation of curry lovers and it all dates back to queen victoria who inspired her own family as well as her people [Music] i'm here in the house's magnificent library with fiona ross who's a food historian who writes a lot about the royals we all know queen victoria had this real interest in india in particular indian cuisine indian culture what about her successes well her successes continued that very much so bertie her son and then his son george v george's fifth despite being rather a dull monarch at least food wise uh was came to adore indian food and india itself and indy itself yes he shifted position from being the sort of monarch who would always eat the same thing every day for breakfast to becoming somebody who was a real advocate for india who felt an enormous sense of responsibility for the empire in itself i mean originally he just hated the idea of leaving britain didn't he yes when he first married mary he insisted that the honeymoon in sandringham telling her i've been abroad and it's not good but then he went to india but then he went to india in 1905 and he and mary traveled 9 000 miles spent 18 weeks there and he was not only impressed by the the magnificence of the landscape you know mandalay rangoon but he also felt a real sense as of himself as the first monarch to visit india he was the first indian emperor she was kind of notoriously unimaginative about food normally but not when it came to indian food that's right yes he moved from being somebody who would punctually eat the same breakfast every morning every day of the week to a lover of bombay duck with curry sauce and it was during his reign that the empire marketing board tried to somehow bring all these exotic foods from empire and commonwealth into britain yes they did and the empire marketing board was established in 1926 and it was headed by the colonial secretary leo emery um they had an enormous budget for the time in order to promote empire produce and from the colonies and the dominions of the british empire it was an enormous publicity campaign for its time there were over 200 empire marketing posters produced which had brilliant slogans um such as the jungles of today are the gold mines of tomorrow housewives were encouraged to cook for the empire there was almost a sense of having an ethical responsibility in what you bought and cooked with but were they being urged to cook really exotic indian dishes or jamaican dishes or something else no the grandly named women's patriotic league focused their attentions mostly on the empire pudding which they started the first empire shopping week in 1922 and they managed to persuade herods and selfridges to give over areas of shop floor to marketing the empire pudding and the idea was that women could even buy the pudding in its ready-made in its bowl so all you would have to do is stir it up steam it what's fun is they're being invited to have all these wonderful exotic things and squeeze them into a traditional british dish yeah yes that's right there's no sort of they're not transgressing any boundaries there nothing anything too dangerous yes that's right look at this paul this is the empire christmas pudding according to the recipe supplied by the king's chef mr sedar by their majesty's gracious consent and we've got currents from australia sultanas from south africa it's got candied peel from south africa demerara sugar from the west indies cinnamon from from india from absolutely all the empire christmas pudding amazing this is the recipe book of mildred nichols who was you know just a few years earlier than this she was a kitchen maid at buckingham palace as we know and one of the most fascinating entries in her recipe book which we got hold of is the plum pudding the christmas pudding absolutely and on one side this is a fascinating thing about it on one side it's the royals plum pudding and on the other side it's the servant's plum pudding what's the difference well this is the point there isn't a difference except quantity i mean look how much more you know it's a it's a small one for the royals but the servants has got 40 pounds of beef suet 40 pounds of flour it just goes to show i mean how many servants were actually working in buckingham palace as a starter there we are mildred nichols plum pudding so what are your ingredients we've got that lovely dried fruit sultanas currants raisins mixed peel beef suet which i love in these old-fashioned steamed puddings all of them they're absolutely fantastic demerara sugar dark brown sugar nutmeg we've got some beautiful cinnamon bread crumbs some rum and some brandy absolutely delicious and if you just look in there what i love is the suet that's what really for me kind of just brings it all together that fat ties it down absolutely very simple put in basin we've just lined it with some butter so we're just simply going to spoon this mix into here michael and it's you can see it's quite really yeah firm mix so the important thing is as you're doing it push down because we don't want to create any air pockets yeah so it's really quite splodgy it is yeah so don't just don't just whack it all in there and like from the top do it stage by stage so we've got all that mix in there don't worry i'm just gonna have to get you to give me a little hand because we're gonna put that tinfoil on top and then we'll put the string round so again like a traditional steam pudding so just all the way to the outside so it all cooks nice and evenly okay really smoothing it off really smoothing it off do you want me now i've seen my tin foil i've lined that with butter as well so everything's like kind of got that lovely butter lined so it's not going to stick simply on top like that go push it on so the butter then sticks to the pudding mix okay and then just this bit is really important you don't want to allow any moisture kind of to get like to get more water to get in there okay should i hold it up yeah just if you can just hold it in place from the bottom right like that and then i'm gonna that's it that's fantastic this is teamwork it is oh that's bubbling away so in here we got nice deep pan lots of steam and i've just got a saucer turned upside down just to kind of like elevate it so the heat's going all the way around and then just really carefully drop your pudding in there sit on top of the saucer just like that and it's about up to what level but basically about it's about a quarter full yeah because we don't want it to move we just want steam lid back on the steam is trapped in there now and that is just going to steam cook for eight hours eight ounces tip just keep an eye on the water because it will boil dry even though the lid's on there and that's it yeah it was a pretty industrial scale yeah in the palace wasn't it i think that make as many as 150 of these things in the palace yeah that's quite a production line hats off yeah and you remember that's all by hand yeah you know no machines or mixers everything by hand it's incredible yeah and that's going to cook for eight hours i'm not going to wait eight hours no you haven't got to because now lucky for you i've been slaving away yep yep and here it is here it is gotta cut it paul cut it you are excited do you like do you like pudding i do actually yeah yeah yeah yeah all right we'll take a nice wedge yep yeah you do that so well look look at that look at the steam yeah yeah yeah beautiful pudding now stuffed with fruit stuffed with fruit brandy butter well the low calorie version are you doing that with a hot spoon hot spoon yet just so it comes off my spoon and just goes up nicely like that and tricks of the trade look at the presentation i'm not going to look at the presentation that i'm not going to look at it i'm going to eat it here we go you can have one yeah i am not a real wedge of brandy butter oh come on come on here devil get in there get in there all the taste buds standing to attention there how good is that oh it is good it is there's something to be said for the servants hall you know if they've got one monstrous christmas puddings and they can have more and more of this oh yeah mildred happy christmas mildred i love you [Music] hello i'm michael burke welcome to a brand new series of royal recipes this time we're at western bird house formerly a grand country house now a boarding school which has played host to royal visitors for over a hundred years in this series we're delving even further back in time to reveal over 600 years of royal food heritage you play amberlin and i will play henry viii and we've been busy unlocking the secrets of britain's great food archives discovering rare and unseen recipes that have been royal favorites through the ages from the earliest royal cookbook in 1390 it's so precious so special that i'm not allowed to touch it to tudor treats from the court of henry viii i can't wait for this one two three we'll be exploring the great culinary traditions enjoyed by the royal family from the grand to the groundbreaking as well as the surprisingly simple i did think that was going to be a disaster as we hear from a host of royal chefs prince philip would walk past or pop his head in what's for dinner what are we having yeah oh yeah it's not just a normal kitchen and meet the people who provide for the royal table it's okay for the queen it's okay for everyone welcome to royal recipes [Music] in today's program we're exploring royal extravagance and in the past they didn't do things by halves some of the culinary extravaganzas produced by royal chefs down the centuries were legendary today on royal recipes we discover the scale of one royal appetite this is a banquet with more than 120 different dishes chef anahar is on a secret mission i'm afraid at this point i'm going to have to put a blindfold on you and we'll hear about the lengths of would-be suitor went to to win the hand of a queen he spent so much money that he bankrupted himself for the rest of his life [Music] i'm here in the royal recipes kitchen with michelin star chef paul ainsworth what's cooking mock turtle suit mock turtles yes as opposed to real turtles yes as opposed to there's no turtles around here no turtles have been harmed in the production of this program no okay now this is uh as served uh at a dinner christmas dinner uh for queen victoria and the royal family uh in 1895 right house her favorite palace on the isle of wight first course turtle soup what do you do i've been so excited about showing you this recipe because i love it so much in here i've just taken some of this beautiful consomme how long does it take to get that meat there into that consomme there right that meat will go into a pan with those vegetables that you can see around the plaza that will come up to a simmer and then actually cook for seven hours okay really slowly and then all of that lovely gelatinous quality that's in the trotters and especially the shin of beef will be going into the stock we then sieve that off reduce it right down and then we get to the stage where we then make consummate so you'd bring the stock up to the boil whisk in some egg whites very gently let the egg whites rise to the top and as the egg whites rise into the top it's dragging all the impurities with it underneath will be crystal clear stock it's so intense in flavor we're just going to put into this pan a little bit of that consummate some peeled and finely chopped celery peeled and finely chopped carrot and peeled and finely chopped swede right now we want to get the flavour happening straight away so we're just gonna crush some sea salt just in there and leave it like so now we're gonna move over to where the mop turtle come from so basically um this recipe was used with green turtles um but they were seen as a stasis symbol very very expensive yeah so the mock came in for the people that couldn't afford the green turtles they would use things like beef shin yeah pig's trotters tongue because it had the same gelatinous rich quality yellow jelly the jellies and the greens the turtle would have had the original turtle suit was a byproduct of the slave trade the sailors in the west indies would catch the turtles they'd bring them back home and the aristocracy saw this rather liked it it became very fashionable very elegant particularly at big banquets in fact real tradition at the lord mayor's banquet turtle soup yeah but because they loved him so much they caught him 15 000 a year were coming to britain but they were hunted to extinction so they were either just too expensive or not available at all so people had to try and find something that tasted like turtle to go in the soup hence mock turtle so all right what are you going to do now so next nothing gets wasted we've then shredded the meat off of the chotter yeah the tongue we've diced yeah and the beef in there yeah we've got now leave those out picked at room temperature okay so they're going to go over there ready for when we plate up yep next which was quite traditional with this recipe was what they called a forced meat ball it's lucky of course stuffing it absolutely so if you could add into that bowl for me we've got some finely chopped smoked bacon bread crumbs and suet there's a spoon okay all right yeah we'll do good i'm gonna go behind you and grab do you remember this bowl in uh lewis carroll's alice's adventures in wonderland isn't it yes there was a mock turtle yes there was and the mock turtle had a calves head it was a turtle's body yeah with a calves head presumably because they made made this soup from carbs head as well so traditionally traditionally that there will be a calf said yep okay i'm gonna add in one egg so carry on mixing please michael okay seasoning yeah always seasoning always seasoning right i'm just gonna get our pan on because once we've made these dumplings we're gonna fry them off right last yeah but not least some beautiful fresh chopped parsley right and a good twist of cracked black pepper now and this is your first meat dumpling okay should i do that go on have a go it's just on the train just about rolling it now it is yeah all the chef in business is simple isn't it it's easy excellent our vegetables are nice and ready to go so in here michael i've just got a little bit of oil and basically the oil will make sure the butter won't burn and then the butter's giving us that wonderful flavor over here we're going to take our dumplings yep right then just into here and just move them around in the pan like so a little bit more butter and then we'll just turn our heat down just a touch royal christmas dinner osbourne house it was uh victoria's favorite palace you know on the isle of wight that was where she retreated after her husband prince albert died right went into almost complete seclusion for a very very long time long period of mourning wore black for years and years and years she had all her children and grandchildren there these days the royals have christmas at sandringham don't they but uh victoria was so fond of osbourne on the isle of wight she was there in august you know for cows week and all that kind of stuff and at christmas as well that may look wonderful they certainly do and they're ready wow look at them they're gorgeous aren't they they certainly just put those over here and now we're going to start to plate up yep right so i'm going to take a little bit of this shredded shin some of that beautiful shredded um pig strawberry lovely tongue going around the outside so taste and texture there texture every day now we've got those lovely vegetables going over the top finely diced vegetables yeah and they're just nice and softened beautifully seasoned with that stock yeah now we've got our dumplings ah right you're you're draining them just draining them off okay just and the reason for is that the butter's done its job see how crispy they are on the outside we don't want that fat to then go into our lovely consummate that we've made okay okay so we're just gonna put three on top like so like that okay now don't pull the consummate over the top go from the side okay this is a real british classic dish isn't it paul in fact in the 30s heinz even did a tin version of it did they really i bet that was that was delicious no come on don't be let me know i'm sure it was great but it wasn't anything like this no i absolutely love this recipe so much can i get it go on for sure yes hmm nice end up yeah it's the consummate bit is really intense yeah and you've got so many different textures and so many different flavors you can see why it was such a principal part of all those big ceremonial banquets it's really substantial isn't it it is and yet you know christmas christmas dinner 1895 this was just the first course after that they had turbot lobster turkey with chipolatas [Laughter] asparagus mince pies plum pudding chocolate eclair and on the side they had barona beef boar's head game pie brawn and hot roast beef my goodness it really like blows me away how much they would consume back then it's you know really rich eating and living isn't it yeah yeah absolutely but mock turtle soup absolutely delicious and not a single turtle was harmed in making this dinner a modern meaty take on a dish originally a staple of 18th century sailors and the georgian aristocracy georgian royalty certainly had a taste for the finer things of life and this was reflected in the ingredients used in royal cooking in the 18th century truffles were often used to flavor sauces and gravies these days many of the truffles we consume come from overseas but there's a growing trend for uk truffle farming so precious is the crop that today's truffle producers insist on complete secrecy [Music] chef anahar went to meet truffle hunter zach frost and his truffle dog stanley i'm afraid at this point i'm gonna have to put a blindfold on you and lead you the rest of the way so if you don't mind just uh slipping this on okay you're gonna have to guide me though okay okay stand the man don't trip me up this way these woods are somewhere in wiltshire and absolutely bristling with wild truffles i think you can now take the mark on so this is it welcome to the truffle woods so can we go truffle hunting yeah why not let's find some truffles the peak season for english truffles is the autumn when the damp cold conditions give them their pungent aroma but they'd be almost impossible to find without stanley so has winter always been famous for truffle hunting well yeah it has actually there's been a tradition of truffle hunting in wheelchair going back uh a few centuries there were once a number of professional truffle hunters in the area supplied truffles to the gentry in london and the royal family they were always a luxury product and then the most famous of these was the collins family um particularly eli collins who for many years was the premier truffle hunter of the area and held a royal warrant as well and he was a part of six generations of truffle hunters but then his son alfred was the last of the line and that was around the 1930s [Music] and what what about the demise of truffle hunting there's a number of factors there's the modern farming methods a lot of the old woodlands were cleared and then the big issue also was the two world wars where a lot of young men died and they were they were obviously distracted from things like truffle hunting and then the secrets weren't really passed on to the next generation it's only recently it's been reawakened and english truffles are back on the menu wow and seemingly back on the royal menu in 2006 the duke of edinburgh planted a one-acre truffle orchard at sandringham in the hope that it will one day provide for the royal kitchens is that truffle stan shout out to me oh thank you a clever boy good boy you see here we found a whole nest of uh about oh wow this one's definitely starting to develop a little bit of an aroma and as you see there's a i mean there's a whole collection of them here really they often grow in big groups wow oh my god that's huge there's so much that i love about truffles i do like the idea that through the year that you get different uh varieties of truffles so you can use them in different ways that it's the the finishing touch to make a dish perfect it's back to zack's place to scrub the truffles clean what inspired you to make the jump into truffle hunting really just kind of fell into it because um i started hunting the truffles purely for the love of doing it i loved hunting them i loved eating them and so chefs started to ask me if they could buy them so it really became a very natural progression to start a proper business well from the taste i had of truffle hunting today i can understand where you kind of get the thrill and yeah it's so exciting and there's this um there's nothing else i'd rather be doing really the big trouble now is keeping up with demand it's little wonder for chefs like anna truffles can make all the difference to the flavor of a dish and that's reflected in the price of autumn truffles 250 grams of these pearls of the earth will cost you around 200 pounds in the shops but really the shape and the size and everything is completely irrelevant compared to the aroma much better have an ugly truffle or a tiny truffle or anything that smells amazing beautiful in the right dishes [Music] truffles are such a delicious treat aren't they they add richness and warmth as well as flavour don't they they do now are you going to put truffles in the next dish i am going to do it with roast pheasant this is a dish that was served at perhaps the most lavish banquet ever really given by the prince regent for the grand duke nicholas in january 1817 tell you more about it in a minute how do you start right whenever you're using truffle do not slice it too thick because when it's nice and thin what happens is it cooks and whatever and that's where you're going to get most of its flavor if it's too thick you don't get that it's incredible isn't it hitting you right in the nose so what i've got here it's also very expensive so very expensive yeah it is getting the most out of it that's the main reason so what we've got here are pheasants on the crown so pheasant can become very dry very quickly if you're roasting it on the bone you've got the best possible chance of keeping it lovely and moist so we're just going to take our bird like so yeah just pull the skin back let's jack it up bullets jackets up that's right okay now i'm just going to take some of this truffle and poke it underneath the skin yeah fold that back down yeah and that is just packed full of truffle underneath that breast like so i'm going to do the same with the other one now over there i've got a nice thick heavy bottom pan like a proper casserole pan the best way i feel to cook this is we want to roast it on the outside course you want that lovely roast pheasant flavor but then we wanna for me poach it almost like steam it okay so we're just gonna keep it moist absolutely season it all over so here as well michael i've just got some cabbage which i've just softened down in a little bit of butter and some seasoning which is nice and simple it's a really rich winter meal it is and this will all come into play later so we're getting our oil here we want it nice and hot so when we when we add our pheasants in japan we've got that sizzle straight away that it said it's caramelizing straight away there we go okay yep [Music] in like so okay all right now what i've done with the legs and the wings i've taken them off i've roasted them and then with the some of the carcass as well i've i've basically roasted that off and put it into chicken stock so then we've turned our chicken stock into pheasant stock it's a really major undertaking this isn't it a really big gift but and this is the amazing thing you know i said it was the most lavish banquet ever held or might have been yes here we are here's the menu look look how many dishes there are dozens and dozens and dozens of them and you think that's a lot it's only half of it because there's all that god all those as well there's more unbelievable this is a banquet with more than 120 different dishes the royal chef at the time who did the banquet was uh marie antoine karem you've heard of hat yeah very famous royal chef okay so what we're just continually roasting over that nice i'm gonna get the color all over so while that's happening we're just gonna chop some chives yeah you know these dishes weren't the only extravagant thing there they actually had a pastry model of the royal pavilion of brighton in the center of the table and they had a a kind of model a mock-up of a turkish mosque made out of marzipan that was four feet high in the center of the table as well four feet high yeah marzipan that's a multi-pack incredible extravagant or what now look at that wow okay roasted pheasant right next yeah same pan all that lovely flavor yeah let's just add in a little bit of butter yeah okay pancetta yeah okay basically stored bacon all right we want to work quickly here michael okay so we want that heat you're moving fast you're moving fast right we've got carrot onion and celery in like so all very finely diced all very finely diced bay leaf just tear it a little bit let the oils come out just one okay bailey's strong some thyme gorgeous stuff mmm the you're motoring now paul we're motoring now white wine oh a really nice dry white wine yeah like that just a glug now over here that wonderful stock that i told you about yup okay the wings and the the legs they've done their job okay now we just need that wonderful infused liquor gosh that little trench that's marvelous next give it a good stir now we go back to our wonderful pheasants pop those in the pot like so now stand them up as well michael so that the the breast is on top yeah the breast meat is on top and now the lid will go on yeah like that okay that's going to go in the oven if you could pop it in there for me and you know what it's going to be a lot less than you think 12 to 15 minutes because remember it's a it's a breast it's not a it's not a shin or beef or some or a shoulder of lamb it's something so delicate yeah but now for me that is the best way to cook pheasant for just 12 minutes just 12 minutes 12 15 minutes what sort of temperature 170 degrees all right so quite a low heat as well you're okay with that yeah no no i'm and just on the side michael there's another one resting okay thanks these dishes are amazing they're so heavy want me to pop it on here that'd be lovely thank you very much so we're just going to lift off the lid yeah look at that oh yeah out come our pheasants gosh they look good and we're just going to let them rest on this platter over here right so in here i've got some cabbage which has been softened down in the butter like i said earlier and i'm just now going to add some mashed potato to it i've just seasoned it michael with some sea salt and some crushed black pepper and you're mixing that all together you're just going to mix that one you're not serving it separately no now here in my sauce i'm just gonna add a little touch of cream not much okay just a little touch of cream like so one more you didn't put much in though no it didn't no so i've got a little separate pan here i'm gonna take some of our chives and i'm gonna have some of the chives for the sauce okay like so and we're gonna have some of the chives to go through the mashed potato and cabbage and we're almost there god it smells so good right over here michael as i scoop up i want the bacon and the vegetables right okay that ready to go okay absolutely beautiful mashed potato so we're just going to serve up michael like so it's out of the way there we go now it all looks so good guys doesn't it right now where are you going to be i'm always interested in where you put the sauce you put it all over the top over the mashed potato everywhere around like so pheasant skin isn't particularly crispy so don't worry about that it's all about flavour wow now the last thing to go over the top of this is more bit more truffle beautiful truffle ready oh it does look good doesn't it roast pheasant with truffles gross present with truffles or as mary antoine karem described it les feisel truffae ala perego oh there we go and some truffle yeah absolutely and that pheasant should be just beautifully moist oh yeah it is moist wonderful texture wonderful taste and the truffles really intensifying everything you know 120 dishes but this must have been the highlight a luxurious dish from an extravagant banquet thrown by an indulgent prince [Music] a king who knew a thing or two about the high life was henry viii and 500 years ago one of his royal palaces was the scene of some very lavish spending leeds castle in kent was transformed by henry into a magnificent residence for his first wife catherine dr polly russell went along to find out more henry wanted his queen catherine of aragon to feel really at home here and he spent a small fortune and a number of years between 15 17 and 1523 renovating leeds castle to bring it bang up to date [Music] historian annie camcaron smith takes up the story henry viii spent a lot of money here to improve the castle and actually turn it into a pleasure palace more than a defensible castle from 1517 through to 1523 we know that the steward here henry gilford was given between two and three hundred pounds every year to improve the castle and make it into a palace that's somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand pounds a year in today's money he wanted it to be hung with luxurious tapestries he wanted there to be feasting and partying here there are no records to tell us the detail of all of henry and catherine stays at leeds castle but one visit is very well documented we know that there was one particular date where an extraordinary feast took place can you tell me about that in 1520 henry and catherine and their retinue of over 5000 people came here to leeds castle and spent one night so traveling with 5 000 people i mean that is completely extraordinary i mean was this typical of his extravagance what do we know about you know him and his relationship to wealth i think it is typical he was used to extravagance he was all about display and pomp and ceremony so for him traveling with over 5000 people was just par for the course the logistics involved in you know all those people where are they going to sleep how do you feed them do we have any documents which tell us what was actually eaten what was actually prepared here that amazing night well we know that the steward here henry gilford he did have warning of them coming for their one night of five thousand people for a big dinner and he got given just over 66 pounds to prepare for it which was a large amount of money a well-paid laborer at that time would have earned about 10 pounds in a year so it's effectively the the year's wages of six full-time workers for one night one night one night of partying that's not bad you can only imagine what fun and feasting took place here fortunately for us there's a shopping list that gives us an idea of what was on the menu there's this ledger from the time which gives the household accounts just the section on fish tells us that a certain john of antwerp was paid for supplying an enormous quantity of fish i mean for example he provides 9100 place i mean imagine just just the site of 9100 place extraordinary and then down here it actually uh suggests three porpoises i mean that also is extraordinary we obviously don't eat porpoise now and nor would most people have eaten porpoise that was really the food of kings deer from the leeds castle estate and were definitely killed and provided for this one night we also know that the dairy went into overdrive and provided lots of goods for people to eat during their stay here that's really interesting what documents like this tell us is how extraordinary and opulent and excessive this event was and this feasting was but that was only the warm-up to the main event the gathering was a stop off on route to a rendezvous near calais with the french king francis the first in a meeting which has come to be known as the field of the cloth of gold this is the 5 000 descending upon calais that this meeting is called the field of the cloth of gold is evidence that it must have been extraordinary as a spectacle of all the gold cloth the guilt i mean these two renaissance princes were they were determined to establish who was the most absolutely powerful handsome the whole meeting i think was about outdoing one another in the friendliest of ways so instead of going to war with each other they've decided to have this great big event where they meet they joust with each other they even wrestle with each other at some point and francis actually overthrows henry which i'm sure didn't go down that well but the whole thing on both kings parts was to outshine the other and henry did his part by building massive tents made out of cloth of gold that shimmered in the sunlight and had massive feasting and dancing and banqueting and jousting it's the ultimate lads night out isn't it it really is yeah the 29 year old henry's extraordinary lads night out had lasting repercussions for his reign we know that when he went out to france to meet francis the first for the field of the cloth of gold meeting the money that he spent on everything out there pretty much bankrupted england when it came to extravagance henry viii was in a league of his own wine food entertainment that man could throw a party i just wish that i'd been there [Music] ah started without me what are you doing i've got some beautiful caramelised lamb's liver make some drinks gorgeous cabbage look how beautiful deep and green that is cooked in butter some salt some pepper yeah i'm just gonna chop up this beautiful lamb's liver and fold it through the cabbage where's my fork and then over on the plate there yeah i've got some stunning beautifully cooked fluffy rice looks nice absolutely does doesn't it yeah no it's not for you what this is for the corgis [Applause] are you serious i'm serious is this what the this is what the corruption is yeah look at that god the royals certainly have the best of everything and that goes for the corgis does it they do this isn't yet so keep your hands off and then just on top i'm just gonna shave some beautiful truffles you know she's had corgis all her life more than 80 years you know right the first one her father king george vi brought dookie his name was in 1933 and she's had 30 corgis since then latest one is called whisper whisper yeah yeah yeah it used to be able to be owned by uh the groundsman at um sandringham up in norfolk he died unfortunately uh and she's adopted whisper she loves horses as well had a pony when she was four right okay and of course famously has all those racehorses two thousand winners she had two thousand winners yeah yeah i wonder what she feeds them yes they're very messed up indeed yeah with a sauce vinaigrette maybe a raspberry coulish truffle she is a dedicated fan of horse racing and the horsiest event of the year is royal ascot one of the most high profile events in the social calendar we know what the queen's animals eat what about royal guests at ascot someone who's in the know is michelle starred chef michael caines in 2015 he cooked for 180 people at the royal enclosure at ascot today i'm making a warm salad of lobster with a curry mayonnaise and a vinaigrette of mango and cardamom so to start with we're going to make the vinaigrette i'm using green cardamom which is great but just to break up the shells we're going to put them in a pestle and mortar so that we get the flavor of the seeds coming out so i chose this recipe for alaska because it really does champions the best of british using lobsters a beautiful product but also a little bit of nod to the commonwealth using the spices from india as us inspiration for this dish we're going to add the spice to this stock syrup which is equal amounts of sugar and water brought up to the boil and we're just going to let that cook out just to extract all of that wonderful flavor michael then adds the juice of a lime and it's zest this will make a gastrique a sweet and sour sauce the day at esca it's incredible really it's a week of celebration so we were cooking for 180 covers every day in the top restaurant and of course when the queen of the queen arrived we also had to send food down for her party as well and obviously the sense of royalty in the world occasion is something which is not lost on you when you're cooking while the sauce reduces michael makes a start on the salad he's using rattay potatoes a small variety that's packed with flavor we're going to cook them simply using some garlic and lots of thyme and bay leaf and then just water just to cover as the potatoes cook michael prepares the mango for the salad you know there's always pressure in the kitchen but in particular royal ass got 180 covers this particular dish wanting to execute it perfectly every time with so much pressure but at the same time so enjoyable so that's the mango ready and now we're ready for potatoes these are cooked so we're going to strain them off using a colander and once they're cooled down we'll peel them and dice them to prevent the reduced gastrique from crystallizing michael adds glucose it's then sieved and combined with the mango puree to make the vinaigrette lid on let's get that blending now gradually add the oil a little bit of seasoning salt and pepper [Music] and there we have our mango vinaigrette and that's ready after steaming for eight minutes the lobster is ready we must have cracked about 500 lobsters for the week so massive jobs all the lobsters came from brixton devon so all using british produce well i've got some i've prepared already for the actual presentation so i'm just going to use this lobster to dice lobster meat is lovely and sweet and to go extremely well with the vinaigrette and of course the curry mayonnaise which i'll be making next for that i'm going to be using vegetable oil and we're going to heat that with a madras curry powder the curry sauce is added to the mix of mayonnaise and greek yogurt you can add as little or as much as you like but the main thing to remember is not to overpower those delicate flavors of the lobster and then we're going to add a squeeze of lime juice and an additional pinch of cardamom and spice okay so now we're ready for the potato salad so you can imagine being at this restaurant right at the top of the main grandstand overlooking the racecourse with thousands of people out enjoying the racing and of course the possession of the royal horses coming with the cream on the carriage but it was such an amazing occasion the salad's different elements are now ready to be brought together so we're going to start off with the mango and then our potato and finally the lobster to this we're going to add our finely chopped mint and now we're going to mix that with our curry mayonnaise that we made all that remains is to warm the lobster through so we're going to heat that through the oven for about 2-3 minutes 180 degrees so while that's in the oven heating up we're going to start to dress our dish [Music] and finally it's time to add those all-important and elegant finishing touches and now for a little bit of caviar obviously for something like royal ascot we're using all of the finest ingredients so there we have it warm salad of lobster with curried mayonnaise and a vinaigrette of mango and cardamom a wonderful dish and what a great day to remember [Music] every royal banquet paul needs a show-stopper it's a big ask but you're not going to fall at this hood like have you got a show stop i'll never let you down michael yes i have a march pan rose much pan rose what's this very very early version of marzipan what they would do is they would bake it so it goes actually quite hard almost like a biscuit and that's what we're going to do right now and this march pan rose was a centerpiece of one of the most extraordinary royal banquets given for elizabeth the first in 1575. so let's get on with it what's what do you do first icing sugar into this bowl ground almonds goes in like so and then if you could just drizzle in some of this rose water for me rose water yeah okay okay it's infused and distilled infused and distilled that's it you can almost smell it so it's almost like a perfume okay okay slowly slowly that's it and i'm just gonna mix until i basically form a dough this banquet held in elizabeth's honor was the most sumptuous expensive affair particularly with how much sugar was used and remember in the 16th century sugar was incredibly expensive this would have been one of 300 sweet dishes at the banquet 300 including sugar sculptures and everything for loads and loads of people because elizabeth was up at visiting kennelworth with a whole entourage and they went up there for three whole weeks and this was the bank of the end of it right that's a snowball isn't it it is isn't it so we're just gonna get that bowl out of our way yep one next and now we're gonna move on to rolling it between two sheets this is fairly simple so far this is not stretching you stretching you too much in fact the whole recipe to be fair is actually very very simple now push it down like that and we're going to take a rolling pin and just roll it and what we want to do michael is we want to keep a circle and with mark you know like with marzipan now we kind of will leave it sort of soft and use it as kind of cake decorating and you know some of the things you can make out of marzipan are incredible i think much of that must have happened at this banquet because a really good story behind it because she was up at kennelworth with her whole entourage as guests of robert dudley earl of leicester right who of course everybody thought was her lover at the time and he rather hoped he was going to be able to marry her so she was there for three weeks whole entourage he laid on banquets he laid on everything right because he thought he was going to marry the queen of england and he spent so much money on it that he almost bankrupted himself for the rest of his life for those three weeks and particularly this particular banquet for what it cost him that's incredible it is isn't it i'll put that that will then go into the fridge just to set up yeah take that top piece of parchment paper off into the oven 150 for about 20 minutes okay so bake like a biscuit okay so you get this there okay oh yeah so now in here we've got uh icing sugar which we're just gonna whis again if you could help me out again if you can start pouring water into there yeah and we're just going to make this is ordinary water this is ordinary water we're going to make fondant icing okay swap that one out and we're just going to add a little bit of rose water okay just for a bit of flavor just a touch just a touch okay i bet she liked rose water because the reason she used to go on tour like lots of medieval and late medieval monarchs would go on tour every summer because their palaces stank yeah balances in london stan there's always the threat of plague of course yeah so they used to go on tour in the summer and the palaces were all cleaned and fumigated and the cesspits were cleaned out and everything so they smelled all right well you know she had the rose water and those pomanders you know they can stick orange with the clothes in it that you can walk around so she doesn't have to smell all these things i think i think medieval and tudor england must have smelled rather very smelly yeah now we're just gonna flood this all over this biscuit get it all in there yep like so that looks good okay next we're gonna put that one back and that at room temperature doesn't have to go to the fridge after half an hour it'll set entirely by itself at room temperature yeah yeah to resemble a bit like your ice bucket okay yeah it is like a nice it's like a nice bun right here we have oh those are rather nice aren't they yes so the same mixture so this kind of march pan style kind of biscuit yeah almost there these are two and we've chewed the roses the emblem of the tudor dynasty and hearts by the way and i remember there's romance here yes this is robert dudley spending all his fortune trying to impress queen elizabeth so she'll marry him yeah where does the colour come from so their hearts have just been sprayed so you basically can get that in all good kind of cooking shops it's just a gold spray and then the tudor roses we've just painted with red food dye and all we're going to do is put the a rose followed by a heart followed by a rose all the way around it's a bit of a hint isn't it it is it is i think he was a very very thoughtful man he was not a very lucky man in this case there was he no that looks really nice it does doesn't it yeah and that michael is my march pan rose how we going to attack it right i'm going to cut you a nice wedge yeah a segment yes actually doesn't feel as kind of uh biscuity as sort of trunk i was expecting it to be a bit more like a crunchier as you go in but it's actually very much like marzipan and i'll just give you a little bit of rose here as well oh yeah like a bit of tudor rose yeah there we go that looks good it's quite a bit to get in your mouth at one go you know very mousy pan texture isn't it a rose petal comes across a lot it's marzipanish without being marzipan it's nice and sweet which is what the tudors wanted yeah the sweetness i'm surprised you didn't marry him after that i am as well all that work and effort funny isn't it to think that we think of elizabeth with her blackened teeth and bad breath and all that kind of stuff is you know horrible but but actually she was the height of fashion having black teeth in tudor times was a sign you were wealthy because only the wealthy could afford sugar so some of them even painted their teeth black amazing had all changes 1575 actually a really good dish well done [Music] hello i'm michael burke welcome to a brand new series of royal recipes this time we're at western bird house formerly a grand country house now a boarding school which has played host to royal visitors for over a hundred years in this series we're delving even further back in time to reveal over 600 years of royal food heritage you play amberlin and i will play henry viii and we've been busy unlocking the secrets of britain's great food archives discovering rare and unseen recipes that have been royal favorites through the ages from the earliest royal cookbook in 1390 it's so precious so special that i'm not allowed to touch it to tudor treats from the court of henry viii i can't wait for this one two three we'll be exploring the great culinary traditions enjoyed by the royal family from the grand to the groundbreaking as well as the surprisingly simple i did think that was going to be a disaster as we hear from a host of royal chefs prince philip would walk past or pop his head in what's for dinner what were we having oh yeah it's not just a normal kitchen and meet the people who provide for the royal table it's okay for the queen it's okay for everyone welcome to royal recipes [Music] there's nothing quite like a royal event for sheer scale and grandeur whether it's a royal wedding a jubilee or even just a party the royals now had to do it in style and the food enjoyed at these great occasions is designed to impress so we're rolling out the red carpet and sparing no expense today on royal recipes you might have to duck oh chef anna creates a culinary masterpiece that looks amazing oh look at that dr annie gray is shown a precious antique with a peculiar royal claim to fame this is the oldest silver chamber pot in the country it's incredible [Music] and chef rob kennedy remembers catering for a right royal occasion to me perfect recipe fit for a king with me in the royal recipes kitchen is executive chef anahara we're starting off in style today unless i'm very much mistaken this is a bottle of champagne very thoughtful of you michael that's enough for you that's for the fish ah so what are you cooking i'm going to cook salmon in champagne today that sounds really good now this is a real royal recipe from the 17th century from the legendary chef patrick lamb who was master chef to four monarchs in the 17th and 18th centuries and this is one of his dishes so how does it work well actually you can open it as long as you promise not to drink all of us so i'm going to start our uh poaching liquid uh i have some shellfish stock here okay you might have to duck ready yes oh my god it takes years of practice to be able to do this you know okay well i'm going to use about half a bottle of champagne which is quite a loss it certainly is i'm just going to add some bay leaf some peppercorn and some sliced shallot this is the recipe that patrick lamb did for charles ii the merry monarch in the middle of the 17th century he would be merry if he was if he had lots of champagne he was quite a character patrick lam actually he was master chef for nearly 50 years when he published this he published his book in 1710 and this recipe is actually in it in the book royal cookery or the complete court cook containing the choicest receipts in all the particular branches of cookery now in use in the queen's palaces so there it is so i'm just seasoning our salmon now and i'm going to place it into the that is a lovely lovely piece of salmon beautiful piece of salmon so our liquids coming up to to boil now so i'm just going to pour some of the liquid on top of the fish so that it cooks nice and evenly it's a real luxury dish this isn't it i mean it is wonderful salmon the champagne and so on i suppose you've got to see it in the context of the time haven't you i mean there's charles ii we've had the civil war his father's head was chopped off and puritanism and that idea of excess and luxury and self-indulgence was banned it was a very stern and a strict time and then you have the restoration of the monarchy charles ii comes back and all of a sudden luxury and pleasure and everything are fashionable again and that's the sort of historical context within which this dish was created if you're actually saying salmon in champagne you're hitting two buttons at the same time well it's funny you should say that michael i'm also going to add caviar to it just just add a little bit more luxury to it i'm just going to chop a little bit of dill which i think has got a fabulous flavor to go with salmon round about the time that this wonderful dish was being created by patrick lam for charles ii you know an awful lot was going on at that time the court was back luxury was back but there were still you know big tragedies and hardships going on the great fire of london was the same decade the plague all that kind of stuff so you know some people had it good and some people had it really bad now what are you going to do i'm going to lift you're going to get it out yes now this is coming out of here this is a bit of a dangerous time yes this is a bit of a dangerous time you're trying to get it out in one piece in one piece so that's oh wow well dad well done look at that yes oh you'd swear i did this for a living okay perfect wonderful oh i'm delighted with that now it doesn't that looks utterly splendid so now i'm going to make the sauce from the liquid that we poached it in all that champagne all that champagne will not go to waste and just grab a tea towel with flavors of shellfish with all those lovely things you stuck in if you wouldn't mind michael uh just to remove the shallots off the fish there oh okay please yep do i need to save them for eating or just get rid of them totally i think just put them on the side yeah okay patrick lamb was even more of a celebrity chef knew anna i think if that is possible i mean three coronation feasts he was responsible for and the one for william and mary in 1689 the feast cost the equivalent these days of a million pounds which is amazing but get this he himself was paid for that one meal by the royals a hundred pounds it doesn't say much now 20 000 pounds for one meal for one meal do you know that's even more than you get come on what's happening over here okay just bringing up the uh cooking liquid to the boil i'm going to add the cream to it right so this needs a pinch of salt just a little pinch of salt in there i'm going to give it another little whisk round yeah so i'm just going to whisk in some butter oh it's not rich enough not rich enough if you if you whisk in the butter too soon it will split you do all these things gradually don't you gradually slowly slowly sort of slosh around okay it looks like our butter's all whisked in there now so now we're going to add in our caviar at the last minute it might be some lemon there might be some left to have with a glass of champagne afterwards absolutely oh yes talking of which have we got any glasses here yeah there we go okay so i'm going to dress this now with some beautiful watercress a little bit of pea shoots so i'm just going to put a little bit of olive oil on these so how are you going to put the sauce on i'm going to pour it into a jug first so i'm going to just pour it over the top right over the top oh look at that and then i'm going to finish it now yep with some lemon zest zest of lemon and what goes so well with this is just some lovely crusty bread and if you like a little bit of mayonnaise before you break your salmon mayonnaise as well and of course what we desperately need with this is champagne would you like to pour i would like to well i'd like to drink it i don't know about pour it here we go observe the fine technique i think you've done this before michael yeah cheers cheers right come on let's see where we go onto the boat you're gonna put it onto the bread yeah okay and there we go oh it's lovely you cook the salmon beautifully the sauce is great salmon in champagne fit for the merry monarch himself the luxurious royal recipe and just the thing for a regal banquet and no royal occasion is complete without liberal quantities of booze one of britain's oldest purveyors of wines and spirits has been supplying the royal family since the beginning of the last century wine expert joe fatterini went to the center of mayfair to uncork the story berry brothers and rudd has an illustrious history stretching back over 315 years based here at threesome james's street opposite st james's palace in the fashionable heart of london you could say from the outset it's always had a royal connection being neighbors with the reigning monarch was a good start for the business simon berry is the eighth generation of his family to work at this supplier of fine wines but it hasn't always sold wine [Music] the business itself started in 1698 founded by a lady called the widow born we don't know anything else about her we don't even know her christian name and she decided to open um a shop basically selling groceries specializing quite soon in tea and coffee the most expensive drinks of their day our most expensive tea cost 10 pounds for a pound of tea and this was at a time when the average wage was 15 pounds a year so that makes some of these bottles look marvelously cheap in comparison it was the widow-born's daughter who first sold goods to royalty george iii bought their coffee during the 1700s later that century they began to specialize in wine that's really good stuff and very expensive by the 1900s they were supplying a different king with booms in 1903 king edward vii bought himself a horseless carriage which was a daimler and it was an open car like all cars were in those days 1993 was a very cold winter and his doctor was very concerned that his majesty might contract a bit of pneumonia so he came to us and said could you produce a warming cordial that his majesty can drink as he is driving the car and incidentally you better make it nice and strong and for 30 years we only sold it to the royal family you couldn't buy it from us unless you were royal it's got a lovely sort of gingery afterglow but it is good and strong isn't it but nowadays you can't really say why don't you have a bottle in your glove compartment when you're driving along the m4 i'm not sure that would go down over here yes how times have moved on does this still get sold to the royal household today i'm sure i'm not to tell you that but yes it does the company has held a plethora of royal warrants simon sells wine to both the queen and prince charles but he has another rather special role he's the official clerk of the royal sellers i run a committee who every so often meet to taste the wines that will be served at buckingham palace or sandringham which is um a nice thing to do and how do you come across a role like this it's not something you see advertised in the back of the metro the reason why i was appointed is because i'm unbelievably discreet today simon helped select the wine for the royal household but back in the 1920s his shop stocked the cellar of a far smaller regal home now then simon what is this well this is probably the most royal collection of bottles that we have these are the bottles that were created for queen mary's dolphus which is this amazing doll's house it was something that was designed by sir edwin lutchens the most famous architect of his day there's running water there's electric light and there is this cellar of wine and we were commissioned to produce these bottles and whatever it says on the label the bottles contain there are some of your own labels ah there's uh there's a cognac here there is some sherry you know my favorite thing is there's the the record book and it has received and then consumed and there are items that have been consumed well you know thirsty dolls absolutely i love it i love it so should you or i ever be invited to a royal celebration you'll know that you're in very safe hands [Music] talking of wine in 1972 the story goes that the queen hosted a dinner for the french president at the time georges pompidou and she wanted english wine so they ordered some english wine to be sent to france to the paris embassy where it was all taking place but it was impounded the english wine was impounded by french customs and when the french customs officer was asked why afterwards he said it says here english wine there is no such thing do you like english yes especially sparkling english wine i think is is really fantastic there's a lot of politics isn't there in there when the royal family put on a banquet or something that's politics and etiquette were you taught etiquette at chef's school you know how to set the table and all that we did like a couple of weeks of training but really that's more for the front of house our main focus was really on on cooking and shouting no i think it's quite i've got um i've got a list here from you know the bible of etiquette which is de bretz you know utensils placed in the order of use from yes outside in obviously forks on the left yep knives on the right tumbler for the water uh a different glass for white and red wine bigger for the red why is that i think to allow the wine to breathe so you can get the bouquet but at the big royal occasions all those courses different wine for each course it's amazing people were still in the condition to walk out at the end of it i'm sure a few of them worked in any good condition to be walking out it's not known whether one royal occasion in particular left guests the worst for wine but the dinner has gone down in history as an especially pomp-filled event back in 1850 prince albert attended an extraordinary banquet that was held in his honor in the city of york annie gray tells us more putting on a dinner for a prince means you've really got to impress everything from the decor to the people to the food itself has got to scream effort the grand feast was hosted at the guild hall in manchin house home to the burgers of york since the 1700s richard pollock is the curator there richard paint a picture for me of what it would have looked like when prince albert walked into this room well if you can imagine this entire hall be decked by tables with beautiful white damascus cloth he would have passed city macy's hanging from the columns and a massive ornamental bars where the stained glass winter is today so it sounds like a really big occasion how many people came well there's 280 invited guests wow but on top of that there would be at least 100 delivered servants there would be musicians and also a select number of ladies were invited to watch the gentleman eat watch the gentleman eat afraid so lucky ladies now behind us i keep catching glimpses of light glimmering off silver and i'm assuming this is the kind of thing they were eating off yes some of the silver we have behind us are very much day-to-day sort of eating wares but we do have one very important piece of silver come on then tell me what we've got here explain what these vessels would've been used for but essentially these are serving dishes now every piece though has got the city coat of arms on right in the middle this is part of the city promoting itself this is marketing the city you're not going to mistake where you are are you the idea of someone just gradually taking food from it to uncover that york crest is quite fun really but there's one particular piece of silverware used by prince albert which he wouldn't have been eating off this is the oldest silver chamber pot in the country it's incredible it's really quite beautiful isn't it very simple design and your crests absolutely everywhere and what does it say on it 1672. oh my goodness it was made in york by a chap called mama dude best and certainly this would be reserved for top table guests so when albert was caught short halfway through dinner it's this that he would have been using to relieve himself he'd probably nip to the little empty room and would have used this pot well perfectly logical [Music] and if that's not enough to put you off your dinner onto the menu the feast was prepared in the kitchens of mansion house by a french celebrity chef alexis soyer arguably the most celebrated cook of the time alexis sawyer is a bit of a hero to me so hearing that he cooked here for this banquet for prince albert is really quite exciting what was on the menu um the first course had 32 different types of soup second course 40 roasts and most of the the food has an exotic french sounding name so it's ala lady mares alla albert this space just doesn't seem big enough to supply banquet for 280 old people i have no idea how they did it so nate that you cycled around my favorite dish from this particular banquet well to be honest there is one particularly disgusting thing they did create the hundred guinea dish which he essentially cost a hundred guineas but its main ingredient our most startling ingredient was turtles heads with sort of keep obscures shooting out their mouths with sort of animal parts attached to it and this was presented as the best creation alexa sawyer would put together for this banquet i think the hundred guinea dish must have been spectacular you've got the oysters from turkeys you've got bits of wood cotton prawns leaping out of it yeah it's really quite disgusting shocking by modern standards that dish cost the equivalent of over ten thousand pounds today with ten times that spent on the event york's lord mayor was clearly out to impress the banquet held here in 1850 must have been really magical to see this room decked out with buntings and flags and with the tables just absolutely piled high with magnificent dishes cooked by one of my culinary heroes alexis soye i would have loved to have been here with prince albert [Music] that lavish affair would certainly have been something to behold [Music] now come on what could you do but can possibly measure up well i don't know if it's worth ten thousand pounds but i'm going to make a pulpatoon today which is a multi-bird roast dish so that's one bird inside another bird inside another bird exactly so what's inside what um so we'll start off with the biggest bird it'll be the turkey then it will be uh duck and then it will be last chicken but uh first of all i'm going to show you how to batten out some of the meat because you need to flatten out the meat so that you can roll it into a valentine when you say baton out you mean beat the devil out yes you want to cover with the cling film because you want to protect the meat even though you're going to beat it up you don't want the rolling pin sticking to the meat and ripping it so um what's best is kind of consistent gentle taps as opposed to like really aggressive beatings do you think this is a bit of a self-indulgence i mean not you i mean you know somebody who wants one bird stuffed inside another bird inside another bird a bit of a novelty rather than a bit of oat cuisine well i think it's interesting i think the flavors are interesting together but also it creates quite a large valentine so it's a good way to kind of prepare food for a group of people and it's a history isn't it you know it's been that sort of wonderful banqueting dish way back into history at the tudor court they'd have dozens of songbirds rather like that hundred guinea meal you know the biggest one would be what a swan or a peacock or something like that right down to a little quail right in the middle incredible yeah okay so that's your duck and your chicken you've almost doubled the kind of area of the of the flesh yeah so i've also actually flattened out some bacon here as well now what kind of bacon are you using here smoky and streaky beautiful delicious smoky flavor and the fat to add a little bit more kind of fat and moisture to the three bird roast because this is turkey breast duck breast and chicken breast so they're all much fat yeah they're all quite lean um so the bacon kind of helps reinforce that as well the force meat that we will be adding in in between the layers as well so what is it forced meat it's a stuffing made of turkey chicken and duck legs down the center okay so we're ready to place our turkey so i'm going to season the meat and this is very important a little bit of beautiful freshly cracked pepper now you're going to put the forced meat yes uh in between each layer that's right and you've also put some herbs in there by the look what sort of thing have you got chopped parsley a little bit of thyme as well okay then we layer on our duck breast the duck next i'm just gonna season the duck meat as well once more don't be shy there is a long tradition of these kind of bolted together uh dishes you know going all the way back to there there was a dish called and what was it it was called the cockin thrice that the catchy name yeah yeah yeah the idea was that they got a the head of a sucking pig and the kind of rear of a turkey mm-hmm and they sewed them together stuffed them and sewed them together what do you think all that was about drama that's just well yeah drama but i think i've got a theory because that was about the time you know just after columbus and all that sort of thing and people were venturing off into these wild places the americas and uh and the south seas and around africa and so on and the sailors were coming back with stories of monsters and you know here be dragons and all that kind of stuff and i think you know people in the kitchen thought oh i can i can knock up a monster i can knock up something strange and exotic and i think and they did a perky a new dish is born well done next i'm going to put uh the chicken breasts in you can see with each layer it's slightly smaller and slightly smaller because you want to be able to roll the valentine my word look at that a little mountain of meat okay time to roll i'm going to bring it over over over over pull it in tight i'm going to tuck this turkey just under a little bit and squeeze it over again oh you've better giant sausage yes it's not going to get away now and nice and tight and what you need to do is chill that for maybe overnight if you can and what that will do is that it will set all the meat up together and when you go to transfer it into the tin foil it'll just leave it as a piece you'll butter the tin foil and place that on so i've actually roasted one of these already and you'll find it just over there i'll get it yep yep here we go get rid of these so i cooked this for about two hours at 160 degrees 160 that's quite low then i turned the oven up um for another hour to about 180. it's really heavy really quite a lot of meat there there's a lot of meat here oh it's going to be brilliant i just know it oh that looks amazing oh look at that so you're just gonna have to wait a little bit longer before i get carving because i'm gonna get the veg on quite simple since there's a lot going on with the meat i thought i'd do some mashed potato and some blanched broccoli i've got some nice chicken sauce here so that's reduced down chicken stock with a little bit of thyme so i'm just going to whisk in some butter i mean it looks really impressive doesn't it i mean it's not quite the hundred guinea uh dish if i may say so whether it's uh turtles heads it's capens it's turkeys it's poolants it's fowls it's grouse it's pheasants it's partridges it's plovers it's woodcock it's quails it's snipe it's green pigeons it's larks and all the rest oh my goodness you've got three i'm so grateful that i just had three okay so i'll turn them down low and i think it's time to carve i think it probably is oh that does look good doesn't it already oh wow look at that so you can see your obviously your bacon your turkey horse meat duck more forced meat and your chicken you've got the lot our bed should be ready now okay do you want this plate yes perfect okay so we have our creamy very buttery lovely beautiful broccoli that's great last but not least oh look at that okay tuck in absolutely after you madame chef i want a little bit of everything yeah and that's the trick that's the challenge to get a bit of everything in your mouth at the same time fortunately i've got a big enough mouth to be able to do this oh look at all that you know bird in the hands with three in the bush or three of them out that's good there you go [Music] oh no do you know i shouldn't have very high expectations of this i thought it was just a gimmick really but it's a dish suitable for any you know special occasion isn't it really kind of how can i put it a 50 guinea dish [Laughter] a cut price 100 guinea dish but nonetheless impressive for that [Music] a chef who's no stranger to a bit of royal pomp and circumstance is rob kennedy he's based at the royal military academy at sandhurst and has cooked for the queen and other members of the royal family several times one occasion was a lavish dinner hosted by prince charles for no fewer than seven middle eastern monarchs this extravagant supper was a celebration of sandhurst's 200-year anniversary and its tradition of welcoming overseas cadets including many arabian royals over the years with seven foreign kings and the future king of england in attendance it required a show-stopping menu for the middle eastern dinner at old college i cooked for the main course a lovely beef dish and that's what we're going to be showing you now top royal dining when prince charles hosts such grand meals only the finest british ingredients are used rob starts with the mini braised beef pudding he begins by caramelizing seasonal root vegetables in a hot pan with garlic thyme and star and ease so we're going to keep the same pan now and we've got this beautiful piece of cheek and all of this fat here is going to become gelatinous and sticky and yummy so we pop that into our pan and just let that color and caramelize once the beef is lightly browned rob pops the veg back into the frying pan with a teaspoon of tomato puree and a pint of beef stock you can see there it's a lovely nice jelly of beef stock he brings it to the boil before transferring the whole lot into a covered saucepan and then in it and braising it for six and a half hours at 150 degrees when the slow cooking is complete the beef will be tender and melting absolutely yummy it's then removed from the liquid with some of the veg and left to cool and if a couple of bits of onion or thyme are in there it doesn't matter just make sure it's not the star anise kind of be a little bit crunchy the remaining gravy is strained and reserved for service [Music] rob then takes flour suet water and a little salt and whips up a rich pastry when i had this middle eastern dinner the closest i've probably got to that many kings was four in a pack of cards so you know a real real achievement um and something i i believe will never ever ever be done definitely in in my culinary career or probably done you know in the history of sandhurst again so what an honor what an absolute honour rob rolls out small discs of pastry and adds the braised beef cheek he then molds them into dumplings we're going to wrap that in cling film so that goes in there it comes up and we put its raincoat on give it a nice twist this way you get to make them perfectly round and then you get your little cling film tie and then you just go around and then at the end of it you get the two together and simply tie a knot take the scissors and cut off and that there is your beautiful braised beef pudding ready to steam for 50 minutes once the steam is nice and hot and the water's boiling pop it in there and that will then cook rob has already marinated a fillet of steak in staranese thyme and garlic for 12 hours he lightly seals the steak in a hot pan with herbs and butter smells delicious before roasting it at 180 degrees for eight minutes during the meal i guess no one really puts their hands up and says thanks very much it's great however on most events when in fact maybe modest and all the events we've done we've always had clean plates so we're doing something right it'd be nice to have a letter though you know or an mbe rob plates up the stake with a garnish of baby root vegetables creamed potato and sauteed cabbage all that's left is the mini beef pudding and that little suet dumpling pudding can just sit in there very proud very precise the dish is completed by adding the braised gravy baby watercress and a dusting of dehydrated horseradish this dish was designed to be special but be british and celebrate sandhurst in 200 years but more importantly show off to our visiting guests being the kings of what we can produce [Music] to me perfect recipe fit for a king [Music] i would have thought catering for so many heads of state would be pretty daunting wouldn't you anna imagine them all in your restaurant imagine them being able to afford it what are you doing now i'm gonna make black flowers ghetto ah now this is in honor of queen victoria isn't it because she loved chocolate and she loved cherries and her mother was german and of course her father was from the british royal family originally german so she loved everything german cherries chocolate black forest gato come on what'd you do first okay so the first thing i'm going to make is the last thing we'll be putting on the cake which is the cherry topping so we have some fresh cherries that have been stoned i'm just gonna mix a little bit of uh water in with corn flour it's the cherry brandy isn't it that's the key thing the kirsten where is the where is the cherry brandy well it's in here it's got some cherries uh soaking in it it's called actually i think in german the schwarzwalder kirschwasser which means black forest um cherry brandy i suppose sound like a native yeah well i am my family originally came from the back for us long long ago oh i love it okay so i've just added a spoonful of uh cherry compote in here as well right and i'm just going to add them to the cherries and just give it a stir but the cherries that was queen victoria's uh uh all-time favorite i think oh cherries yeah she didn't have black forest gutter but she had she had cherries with rice pudding at her uh golden jubilee dinner in windsor in 1887. okay now what right so we're going to make a savion which is essentially egg yolk and sugar whisked into a beautiful creamy light foam this is rich this is rich imagine doing that by hand i mean what a lot of beating that would be yeah and this is for one case and you know the truth is you know they would never been making one cake okay so this is good [Music] next our sugar goes in the bowl we're going to whisk up our egg whites right and i'm going to give my cherries a little check oh beautiful so i'm going to take these out pop them into a bowl so they'll be ready for us at the end lovely i think if you weren't looking anna i might be around there trying those so i'm going to fold in my cocoa and my salt while we're waiting for this to whisk and then you just want to really delicately fold that looks gloopy and wonderful doesn't it yeah it's going to be really lovely when we get the egg whites in there as well okay this looks like it's done now is this the sort of thing you want the peaks and all that this yeah so i'm being really careful with folding in my egg whites oh my word look at that okay so i think we're ready for this to go in the tin okay lovely oh my god so good yeah look at that this is going to be cooked in the oven at 180 degrees for at least a half an hour okay thank you very much thank you welcome lady [Music] next we're going to whip our cream and icing sugar and vanilla the vanilla gives it a wonderful flavor doesn't it absolutely so you just cut your vanilla pod in half right i just want to scrape out the seeds hopefully this won't go everywhere there's so much richness in this gato i'm just going to strain the kirsch of the cherries right okay yeah fold that in it's important that your sponge is really cool when you go to make it because if you put cream on a warm sponge it's just going to melt so i have a sponge that i made earlier here nice and cool nice and cool i'm just going to start off with my base layer start off with a little bit of the jam that we put inside our cherries spread it out spread that around now our beautiful gorgeous cream what would my doctor say about it now how thick do you make these layers to be honest personal taste it should be as big as possible because you know well it's not an understated pudding is it no and this is this is all about display and oh kind of conspicuous consumption and the last one a last layer which i'm gonna soak with kirsch okay and now for the finishing touches and our cake stand oh yes gotta have a cake stand okay and then i just have a little bit more um whipped cream to go around oh yeah yeah yeah and we're really short of cream for this dish there's a kind of heart attack on a cake stand isn't it a heart attack of excitement okay and i think i might need your help with this one michael okay so to lift it yes you have to lift this one oh okay yeah i love it i love it there we go and now we're just gonna put these around the side like this making it a kind of stockade yeah i'm doing it incredibly carefully you're doing a great job actually i'm yeah i am i think i'm a natural it'd be a shame to eat this wouldn't it absolutely not be shame not to eat us okay and now we're going to top it with our cherries and the smell last one okay whoa look at that the schwarzwalder kirschwasser and blackfire's gotta hear me let's dig in so look at that go on after you that's so good it's exactly what you want a black forest to taste like [Music] it's really light though isn't it but it's rich and the cherries give it that wonderful juicy juiciness as well oh victoria you've got it right that was wonderful [Music] hello i'm michael burke welcome to a brand new series of royal recipes this time we're at western bird house formerly a grand country house now a boarding school which has played host to royal visitors for over a hundred years in this series we're delving even further back in time to reveal over 600 years of royal food heritage you play amberlin and i will play henry viii and we've been busy unlocking the secrets of britain's great food archives discovering rare and unseen recipes that have been royal favorites through the ages from the earliest royal cookbook in 1390 it's so precious so special that i'm not allowed to touch it to tudor treats from the court of henry viii i can't wait for this one two three we'll be exploring the great culinary traditions enjoyed by the royal family from the grand to the groundbreaking as well as the surprisingly simple i did think that was going to be a disaster as we hear from a host of royal chefs prince philip would walk past or pop his head in what's for dinner what were we having yeah oh yeah it's not just a normal kitchen and meet the people who provide for the royal table it's okay for the queen it's okay for everyone welcome to royal recipes [Music] this time we're exploring festival food and we'll discover whether the royals like to do things the traditional way when it comes to celebrating the various feast days and holidays in the british calendar [Music] coming up we discover how a tudor king dined at easter after giving up treats for lent the idea of henry viii giving up anything well you know where i'm going there we'll delve into the records to see what queen victoria was served at a royal family christmas dinner here you've got a roast turkey and sausages plum pudding and we'll find out what prince charles tasted to celebrate the hindu festival of lights that was one thing he sampled he loved it well we're in the royal recipe's kitchen with executive chef anna ha and take a look at this what are you cooking i'm going to make buff roti along glaze it's english roast beef for goodness sake as served to the prince of wales bertie eldest son of queen victoria in 1875 on a naval ship in calcutta harbour and they did a christmas banquet for him and this was one of five main courses let alone all the other courses that he had on that ship birth roti a long glaze what sort of cut of beef is it this is ribbon beef it's a perfect cut for a large roast dinner the best way to cook this is to cook it at a kind of medium temperature 180 degrees well you know for about two hours or so um so i'm going to cut some vegetables to go underneath the beef and that will really help to make a delicious gravy at the end okay this is a big big dish isn't it this is a big dish he had a hearty appetite at bertie and 50 of his closest friends on this ship hms cerrapis i'm just thinking in calcutta harbour and all that heat and you know what they had they got they had the ship's crew trying to turn the deck into a christmas wintery scene they used lots and lots of cotton wool to make it look as though it had snowed in calcutta it must have been incredible now tell me what do you look for in a in a really really wonderful joint of beef like well you're looking for a beautiful bright red color you're also looking for good marbling um what the fat in inside the meat and it's so important because that's what gives it loads and loads of flavor so i'm going to place my vegetables in this roasting tray and my beef is going to sit on top of them and then all of that juice as it comes down into the pan and essentially we're going to have a gravy from it so i'm just going to season the beef very important this is the ultimate british or english isn't it absolutely especially when it's served with the famous yorkshire pudding yorkshire pudding absolutely an irish woman making yorkshire puddings this should be interesting should it be allowed there we go you're okay you want a hand oh i'm fine so i'm gonna put some uh beef dripping on top of this now i mean this was his christmas banquet dish for him and his mates uh in india but would you rather have a great big joint like this of beef or would you prefer turkey which now i think you know turkey's the traditional christmas dish now absolutely i would prefer to have this turkey for me is an interesting meat but not as glamorous and delicious as a rib of beef now what are you gonna do with that so this would go into the oven for at least two hours you know you check it after two hours um but um i was in early today and we got awake i've roasted one up already for you oh so i'll get rid of this down here okay and um i'm going to show you how to make yorkshire pudding batter ah 300 grams of flour yep five eggs and 250 ml of milk and that should give you actually the right combination i think that's the right combination so i'm just going to give this a good whisk and then i'll add the last of the milk just in at the at the end so you're doing this for imagine you're doing this for the future edward the 70s prince of wales then he was he was really rather wicked wicked naughty or wicked bad oh no no no i think uh wicked naughty else had a bit of a reputation you know drank quite a lot at an enormous amount gambled and did have a bit of a reputation with the ladies so so he had a wonderful nickname he was called edward the caressa so i've just added the last of the milk and it should be the consistency of double cream oh right okay so it's really important that you rest this mixture is that the most common mistake that people make with yorkshire pudding to be honest i think there's so many mistakes with yorkshire puddings that people make that when you are cooking it in the oven the oven needs to be very hot your your tray that you cook your yorkshire pudding in also needs to be very hot your fat needs to be hot you need to be very fast when you open the oven and pour your mix in you leave the oven open yes yorkshire puddings are for the faint-hearted they're the souffle in the english world okay so um this mix you know you were put in the fridge for a couple of hours i i did rustle one up earlier on we're going to make some now if you want to follow me through okay now in here we've already got our hot tray as you can see and then we're just gonna pour it straight in on top that's it oh you've got a steady hand there we go closing it up quickly now i don't know how you can walk away from them i'd be sitting there watching them and see if they actually work okay what next okay now we're going to make the gravy this is the best bit of roast dinner for me i'm going to use the dripping that we cut from the beef earlier on when i was roasting it yep i'm going to pour that into the pan and that's just going to give it a gorgeous um beefy flavor and i'm going to have a tablespoon or so of flour yep i'm going to give that a little mix and then i'm going to add a very small teaspoon of mustard powder oh so we're just going to cook this flour out a little bit and then i'm just going to warm this up slightly so you want these two pans to be roughly the same temperature okay so what's in this new pan here so this is the meat juices from the beef after it came out of the oven right so not at all looks this are you going to put the two together yeah wow and now i'm going to add some red wine oh an absolute essential i'd say yeah and then i just want to cook that wine out i think so i think bertie probably had a few glasses of wine when he eventually became king he was really quite a successful monarch i think well i'm going to add a a little bit of butter to this so you just want to stir it it's gotten really dark and really rich isn't it yeah it's the wine of course yeah i think it's a bordeaux [Laughter] a little taste yep unless you want some more red wine delicious no that's perfect no gosh that looks smooth yeah i think we're done now if you want to get the beef oh yeah let me create a bit of space there we go here we come oh it really is unbelievably heavy there we go dang it oh yeah come on pour the gravy first and then we'll do the big reveal if i grab one side you grab the other yep yep thunder of drums you grab that okay one two three yay that's beautiful oh where do you start with that i'd also have a little bit of cabbage to put oh yes you must have a bit of cabbage it's so important with a large piece of beef like this to be honest with any meat that after you've roasted it that you rest it usually it should be approximately half the time approximately so we're almost there but we can't forget oh don't forget the the most important part those yorkshire puddings those yorkshire puddings are you nervous about them no i am not quietly confident yes loudly confident not quietly anything are you adam oh my goodness yeah look at that here's our yorkshire puddings oh eight huge nuclear explosions in the oven look at that yeah oh my goodness well done tara berf roti a long glaze as served to the prince of wales in calcutta harbour christmas 1875. perfect fair for a royal christmas even one spent in the heat of india and a fine festive dish to set before a king in waiting after you no i insist you go first yes that lovely meat oh absolutely melting well that's a dish that makes you feel patriotic the roast beef of old england that bertie had for christmas [Music] christmas as we know it today is very much an invention of the victorian era the christmas tree crackers and even the food we serve all a great deal to the influence of victoria and albert this is osborne house on the isle of wight where dr annie gray unwrapped the story it was victoria and albert's holiday home a place where they could play with their families bathe by the sea but it was also after 1861 when albert died the place where victoria spent all of her christmases [Music] the english heritage curator at osborne house is michael hunter i know that queen victoria liked to say she was responsible for introducing the christmas tree to britain is that really true she didn't the christmas tree was introduced much earlier in the 18th century by queen charlotte who was german and the whole idea of bringing in a real tree and decorating it is a german tradition so of course when she married the german prince albert well of course what do you have to have at christmas a huge decorated german fir tree and so the idea of that was really popularized by queen victoria and prince albert in the early years of their marriage this period also gave rise to a number of other christmas favorites crackers were invented and the sending of christmas cards first began during victoria's reign [Music] but the royals also influenced the meaning of christmas making it far more family orientated the georgian christmas before victoria was much more riotous and fun and full of drunkenness and very very adult victoria really did change a lot of that didn't she by projecting this image of family and i suppose is really quite a conservative intimate christmas generally i think they were trying to improve the image of the royal family there was an effort i think to make the monarchy at that time a bit more sort of respectable bourgeois i suppose middle class sort of image and so the that ideal family unit that victorian albert were projecting was something that certainly focused in on christmas and the illustrated london news in 1848 famously published an engraving of victorian albert standing on either side of the wonderfully decorated lighted christmas tree with their family a scene of festive domestic bliss but despite the similarities there were still a few differences between today's christmas and those enjoyed by the royals in the mid-19th century queen victoria was fond of presents and the presents were displayed with the tree but they weren't wrapped were they no opportunity to tear off the wrapping paper on you know christmas morning or christmas eve as it was here at osborne um yeah everything displayed very formally on on these christmas present tables but they did have candles didn't they they were lit up the trees in a delightful display of um possibly burning down the entire house yeah no electric fairy lights uh in those days all real candles i mean they were only lit two or three times over the festive periods and i think it must have been quite memorable because visitors to osborne and members of the household do record the fact that you know the rooms were glittering and you know the trees looked fantastic and all the decorations were absolutely you know breathtaking so it must have been quite a sight queen victoria had a significant impact on our christmas traditions in particular the festive foods that feature on dinner tables today in front of me i've got a dining ledger now these ledges were records of all the things eaten at the royal palaces for whichever day of the year it was this one is for christmas day 1897. by the 1890s the queen was eating sequential meals she had seven or eight courses so she starts off with pheasant soup and goes on to fried whiting but here you've got a roast turkey and sausages plum pudding what we now know as christmas pudding going onto the on treme she's got asparagus which of course is not in season at christmas a tribute to the brilliance of the kitchen gardens at the royal palaces she has mince pies she has a rice pudding one of the most interesting features is a side table which was always a feature of the queen's christmas dinner and it was an enormous table laid out with a stuffed boar's head a huge game pie a massive barrel of beef three or four hundred pounds in weight with the tail curving over it that table was there just in case the diners at the queen's christmas meal got a little bit hungry after their seven or eight courses and decided to have a nibble on something else this is a tremendous amount of food but through it we can just see the glimmerings of a modern christmas meal so perhaps this christmas when we sit down to our beef and our plum pudding we could raise a small glass of whiskey to queen victoria for helping us to reach the modern christmas [Music] it isn't just the modern british christmas that bears victoria's regal stamp it was during her reign that chocolate easter eggs began to be enjoyed and sending easter greetings cards to friends and loved ones became fashionable easter of course celebrates the new life that bursts forth in the spring and no easter feast is complete without some spring lamb marian jones has farmed the slopes of the cambrian mountains since he was a boy and his lamb has graced the royal table this is a classic crossbred lamb out of the welsh mountaineer and the father would be a taxil tap this is pretty lively this particular lamb is um about three months old at the moment and these crossbred lambs if we can show you they are wider so there's more meat on the bone we specialize in the spring lamb market the lamb in january in february the grass quality is so much better in spring march and april it's nice and fresh they're sort of slaughtered around 12 to 16 weeks old and the the meat is very very tender and sweet and the feed works we get is very encouraging all the time marion is among a band of sheep farmers on these hills who've joined forces to promote their wares the cumberland mountain lam group the prince charles has put his effort and weight behind the group at the very outset he made a painting of the local mountain area and that painting was on the camry mountain lam branding on the packages when it's been sold biggest royal claim to fame was supplying the lamb for the queen's diamond jubilee celebrations coincidentally in year 2012 we met prince charles in person in the royal welsh and we asked him how the meat was and he said very very nice indeed [Music] ten miles from the mountain fields is the village of clandovery butcher die matthews has been running a family business here for nearly 30 years thank you very much thank you dye's shoppers had royal recognition charles visited in 2011 and marion's lamb is on the royal shopping list we've been supplying him now for about eight years and you know it's something that we are very pleased and privileged about today dye is preparing a leg of marian spring lamb it's quite a simple homemade stuffing made with breadcrumbs we've sorted off some onions some apricots and some lemon on thyme and it's very easy stuffing but a very tasty stuffing the vegetables will help with this the gravy so if we put the lamb on there the flavor of the lamb is so good we don't need more than a little bit of salt and pepper the flavor that's in the stuffing will complement the lamb perfectly that then we'll go in the oven for about three hours on 180 and that should be absolutely gorgeous when it comes out while the lamb's roasting local carpenter mike blowfield installs a plaque to celebrate their royal seal of approval [Music] this year they were officially granted a royal warrant it's a huge honor did almost bring a lump to the throat it was it was a real really proud moment you know i thought well yes i have achieved something it was it was a wonderful feeling and it's all down to the finest cuts of lamb it isn't about me it's about the producers it's everybody that plays a part in having this fantastic piece of meat on your plate for sunday lunch proof of the pudding it's in eating and that believe me is worth the effort [Music] it's become a tradition to have lamb at easter but this is a much older tradition there's no lamb or any other meat in sight what are you doing anna i'm going to make tarte out of lent tart out of length much older chew the dish what's in it so all the things that i guess you weren't allowed to have in lent are in it so we have a lovely cheshire cheese definitely no cheese inland cream cheese eggs flour butter and spice pepper something very special to have back then pepper would have been incredibly expensive wouldn't it okay so where do you start i'm going to start with the pastry nice shortcut pastry i'm going to roll it out with some flour with some flour this is a really really really old tradition yeah henry viii would probably have had something like this at the end of lent though the idea of henry viii giving up anything well you know where i'm going there absolutely so this needs to be quite a thick base why because it i mean this is fascinating um there is no mold to hold the case in place right so the first thing we need to do is make the shape of our base a perfect circle rid of that and the pastry can i take that somewhere yes thank you michael and then all you need to do is give it a pinch all the way around that's great technique isn't it it's like a tart and a tin in one yeah yeah that's ingenious okay so i'm just going to move that onto my okay baking tray there and i'm going to move on to the filling so i'm going to take now what cheese is that this is cheshire cheese so it's got to be a crumbly cheese like cheshire so cheddar cheddar wouldn't work well cheddar wouldn't work as well it'd just be a bit greasy right right so this is nicer so i'm just going to crumble this into our food mixer which is actually quite easy to crumble and then i'm going to pulse it a bit to break it down because you essentially want to make it into a paste i'm going to pop the lid on here these days of course those people who do observe lent tend to break the fast with chocolate now don't they but of course henry viii didn't know anything about chocolate we didn't have any chocolate in this country until the 1650s i think so whatever else he might have over indulged in chocolate wasn't one of them that wasn't one of them so i'm gonna add in my cream cheese now now why the cream cheese as well is that all part of consistency yeah i exactly it helps with the consistency so eggs pinch of salt it's not too salty yeah good and then this the pepper the pepper pepper really makes this dish sink nowadays salt and pepper everywhere every single table so reasonably cheap and yet in those days some people would never have had us oh absolutely far too expensive now you don't want to leave it in the mixer for too long because you'll add too much air into it and then it'll bloom up too big okay slop it in yeah that's it that does look good doesn't it actually you need the pepper don't you to give it a bit of a briskness yeah yeah yeah a bit of bite yep now almost there yeah you've done that now just flatten it out so you just want to make sure that you haven't got any little air pockets so you're just pushing it to the edge into those little grooves that you've made yeah now normally you'd want to chill this for probably about 40 minutes if you put it straight into the oven and the pastry hasn't rested and the mix hasn't rested it's likely just to kind of go blur yeah yeah okay um so would you mind popping that in the fridge okay yep and hopefully on your way out you'll pass by the oven and there should be one already in there baking look at that oh beautiful look at the color of that beautiful put it on here that's great or maybe here would be good there we go there we go another burn [Laughter] i blame you anna actually oh i'm sorry health and safety come on okay so uh we're gonna make our vinaigrette next this is a mustard vinaigrette which i think goes really really well with the cheese and also the pepper bit of sharpness so and a bit of sharpness yep so a spoonful of your whole grain mustard this whole grain yeah maybe i'd say yeah a teaspoon of honey and then just english mustard you use honey rather than sugar i noticed yeah i think honey well i think honey's got a little bit more flavor to it and in tudor times of course i'm sure they used a lot of honey because sugar itself was very hard for me very hard to come by now what's this this is a teaspoon of white wine vinegar yep and then i'm going to put um i think maybe three teaspoons of olive oil seem to have rather more oiled uh than vinegar yes then then i would in my untuted way do well you like more vinegar mmm yeah i'm a bit of a vinegar-free cream yeah well that's actually a good sign you know it's a sign of someone who has a good palate yes i prefer acid to sweetness so it's a nice emulsion there just going to give it a little taste for acidity and deliciousness hmm that's good yeah can we just grab the leaves here probably great keeping it fresh yeah that's wonderful okay great so this is just pea shoots mustard cress and mustard frills so i'm going to take a little bit of the dressing spoon [Music] okay and now i'm going to give the tart a little cut it's a lovely lovely color kind of apricot color yes it is that's the cheese oh yeah yes that looks beautiful on this brilliant plate now the last thing i'm going to add to this is caraway seeds now caraway seeds are very special i think they're extremely versatile and very memorable and caraway is most delicious when you have just chopped and a little bit like pepper you know the reason why we like to ground that i think caraway was in much more widespread use in tudor times because we've been around longer oh my gosh you can just you can smell the sun it's beautiful apart from that wonderful smell what do you think it adds to something like this a depth of flavor it's depth of flavor and that's the whole bonus from spices no wonder the tudors and all those people in medieval times valued it so much that's it let me just give this a like what are you doing here a little roll of our hands in our hands so you can kind of create a neat presentation yep of your salad the salad right and that way it sits kind of nicely and then a sprinkling of the caraway seeds on top on top of the salad and the pie and that's it and there you have it tarte out of lent oh a celebratory tart come on what's it like the acidity of the vinaigrette goes so well with the the cheese tart and then the finish of caraway mm-hmm wow it's really nice it's so cheesy and so smooth and you're right a salad makes it a delicious dish to break a lenten fast and satisfy even the most indulgent of kings at easter [Music] christianity isn't the only culture to celebrate festivals with food prince charles has let it be known that he intends when he becomes king to be known as defender of faiths to reflect modern britain's multicultural society charles's enthusiasm for the diverse culture of britain is also reflected in the food he eats he's visited the west london restaurant of dipner anand and her family on a number of occasions smells and looks yummy dipner now serves the delicious punjabi delicacies her grandfather once made for maharaja's to british royalty one visit from the prince was at a very special festive time of year when prince charles visited that was during the time of diwali in fact it was diwali day so we were quite lucky to have him here with us diwali is a festival of lights we celebrate it in a really big way so like christmas we like lamps we share great food especially sweets and that is said to welcome the goddess lakshmi who's the goddess of wealth a diwali tradition is the making and eating of sweet treats one of the main desserts is garja hulvar everyone loves to cook that and when prince charles was here at the restaurant that was one thing he sampled he loved it today with the help of her dad gulu dipner is recreating the festival dessert enjoyed by charles and camilla gadrihalva simply means carrot pudding it's a hot pudding that i love to eat with ice cream but it goes really really well there's even some single cream so it's a really royal dessert dish right now that we've grated the carrots and got a bit of strength in our arms it's time to make the garja halwa and we're going to start by sweating the carrots down in the milk the reason we add milk is to help the carrots cook faster and also add some moisture when prince charles visited both the duchess and his royal highness were quite intrigued as to how carrots can be made into a indian dessert and then they tasted it yes they really liked it they really really enjoyed it indian desserts are massive during diwali time not just things like the garja halva something else that we love eating during diwali dad bring us over that burfi burfi is an indian sweet meat traditionally made by condensing milk and sweetening with sugar they're often flavored with fruits nuts and spices that's a chocolate one that's a toffee one and you've got some orange here we've also got gotcha halwa burfi yeah that's we've got a layer of carrot pudding here and then on top we've got the actual barfi which is good with the condensed milk milk yes dad is the worst because he eats too much burfi after after his dinner he likes to have i think about two three pieces on average once a year i think it's fine yeah it takes around 25 minutes for dipner and gulu's grated carrot to cook and for the milk to evaporate if you add in that sugar shall i do that still on a really high heat and that's really nice now so let's add the ghee traditionally in indian desserts we do use ghee clarified butter it kind of melts in your mouth and i think that's what the duchess and prince charles were quite wowed bye when they tasted this so right now i can see it's ready for the milk powder and the milk powder makes it even creamier and more rich and now you really have to work this with your arm once the sugar ghee milk powder and carrots are cooked through it's time for a hint of spice green cardamom powder and some crunch we're just going to add a little bit of um pistachios and almonds mmm that looks good it is fantastic smells even better i'm happy with that switch that off and time to plate up so i'm going to add a little bit of pistachio on the bottom of the bowl and then some carrot pudding inside this bowl like this then what i'm going to do is carefully tilt it like this come out put the ice cream in there yeah and that's my guard rehova and ice cream done the perfect diwali festival pudding fit for a maharaja or a british prince [Music] you can't have a festival you can't have a feast at a festival without a sweet course so anna what are you going to do for us i'm going to make yule lag so a royal family tradition apparently they have their christmas uh lunch at sangre sandringham they go off for a walk they come back they watch the queen doing the christmas message and then they sit down two you'll log you look i don't know how did you do that they made it i was like god these royals are great no they just eat it well maybe sometimes i do who knows so the first thing i'm going to make is actually the last thing we're going to put on the log um because we need it to be cooled and set enough so that we can work it out so you do it and what is that what are you doing this is a ganache ganache is like a thick emulsion of chocolate and cream so our cream is coming up to the boil and this is essentially what's going to melt our um our chocolate i'm going to pour that over the top okay and this has to cool next i'm going to make the actual sponge um so i need to crack my five eggs every culture's got a midwinter festival haven't they and in in the norse countries the midwinter festival they actually had a log they'd get a log covered with holly and ivy and they'd burn it and the idea is that the smoke would somehow cleanse the atmosphere of the evil spirits or the events of the previous year it was a way of moving a transition from the old year to the new year rather nice idea and this kind of duplicates that i suppose that's quite fascinating yeah i know okay we're gonna whisk this up into a beautiful savion where you whisk eggs and sugar on a high speed and this dissolves the sugar into the eggs and adds lots of air fluffing the whole thing up making the resulting sponge very very light exactly you hope okay you hope too because i i'm assuming you want to eat it well if you press me oh look it's really getting yeah looking pretty good now yeah i think we're good surely it must be done yeah it looks good man let's have a look yeah yeah yep yep yep it's done okay well done so now i'm going to fold in the triangle thank you thank you i'm going to fold in all our dry ingredients cocoa some flour and our mixed spices which gives it like a little secret hint of flavor and you just want to fold that through yeah don't beat the air out of it we do not want to keep it yeah okay now we'll pour it in oh thank you michael okay so i'm gonna pour it in yep and i think that looks quite enough it's going to rise a little bit yeah so you don't you don't want to overflow when it rises okay so if you wouldn't mind popping that in the oven for me for uh let me guess temperature 180 degrees absolutely that just came to me in a flat and for 10 minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes okay wonderful so now i'm going to finish the ganache the chocolate's melted look hasn't it great long black streaks does the butter give it that shine or is it inherent in the chocolate do you think it's a bit of both but yes i think the the butter does increase the glossy look off yeah beautiful ganache i'm just gonna put a little splash of the rum now i'm going to make the filling i'm going to whip some cream and some sugar and then i'm going to add some chestnut puree and some rum to that after the french love it at christmas time and this is christmas we're talking festivals we're talking christmas we're talking yule i'm just going to let that whisk and i'm going to add a little bit of rum to my chestnut puree to loosen it up modest i'd call it modest this is getting a lovely consistency yeah it's looking pretty good yep well done oh yeah pretty smooth in every way yeah okay and then you put ah right right right right okay so that's our chestnut cream okay now i say it's about 10 minutes now you want to turn the sponge no you're absolutely right i'll go and get it my word it's hot maybe just place it down here that would be great okay so the key is that you want to roll this while it is hot because if you roll it while it's cold it will crack it'll split yep okay so on it but you've got to do it pretty quickly before it comes out quickly yes take our greaseproof off there we go yeah yeah yeah yeah so i want to just be really careful as i'm folding it over then i just keep rolling it and rolling it under the cloth under the cloth but uh you've forgotten to stick the stuff in well this is too hot now i can't put the cream in it but earlier on i did roll so i'm going to leave this one here and i'm gonna take this one out so this you did earlier equally successfully equally successful so i'm just gonna put the cream this is the thing that you like i do yeah this is great when you're sticking the goodies into it that's it yeah and you want to be quite generous yeah a little bit there's no point in scrimping exactly at christmas time with a yule log okay just give it a little squeeze and then we'll just roll all the way to here it's not the oldest of our puddings you know no no no i think i think we traditional christmas pudding plum pudding it was another role george the first his first christmas as king of england in 1714 he ordered up plum pudding and we've been eating plum pudding at christmas ever since but this is the sandringham favorite and all i want to do now is that if you see that i'm just kind of running my palette knife along to make it look a little bit more like a log like a log so you're making it look like bark exactly yeah like bark come on you're an artist really i don't think this is art i think this is cooking oh okay that looks like a lock that's it is it finished yeah i'm just gonna serve it with um some strawberries just a few berries um and now i need to go through the nail biting oh i wouldn't say that was cocky there's a lot of fear there wasn't you didn't show it okay and we put some strawberries throw a few straws yeah might cut them okay yeah just make it look good maybe a little dusting of icing sugar and there you have it mule log with the chestnut cream would you like a slice i think that's what they call a rhetorical question come on let's have a go okay all right you grab your plate i've got a plate here very much to hand okay i'm kicking the cutlery there we are [Music] that looks good would you like a little strawberry on the side i would oh yeah yes yes yes yes yes yes [Music] really light your chestnut [Music] it's a really brilliant thing to have at christmas whether you're in sandringham or somewhere perhaps less exalted [Music] hello i'm michael burke welcome to a brand new series of royal recipes this time we're at western bird house formerly a grand country house now a boarding school which has played host to royal visitors for over a hundred years in this series we're delving even further back in time to reveal over 600 years of royal food heritage you play amberlin and i will play henry viii and we've been busy unlocking the secrets of britain's great food archives discovering rare and unseen recipes that have been royal favorites through the ages from the earliest royal cookbook in 1390 it's so precious so special that i'm not allowed to touch it to tudor treats from the court of henry viii i can't wait for this one two three we'll be exploring the great culinary traditions enjoyed by the royal family from the grand to the groundbreaking as well as the surprisingly simple i did think that was going to be a disaster as we hear from a host of royal chefs prince philip would walk past or pop his head in what's for dinner what are we having oh yeah it's not just a normal kitchen and meet the people who provide for the royal table it's okay for the queen it's okay for everyone welcome to royal recipes [Music] this time on raw recipes we'll be looking at breakfast traditions down the generations as we discover how the royal family enjoy perhaps the most important meal of the day [Music] coming up imagine eating all this kind of stuff for breakfast chef anahar oh perfect never doubt me michael paul ainsworth gets a flavor of just what makes a royally good breakfast brew i'd have that any day over a cup of coffee that is amazing and we catch a rare glimpse of some of the oldest cookbooks from the royal kitchen there are ingredients like herons and porpoises this really is a different time of eating [Music] hello and welcome to the royal recipes kitchen with me is executive chef anna hart there's an old saying isn't there anna that you should breakfast like a king you should lunch like a prince but you should dine like a pauper now which of those are you going to do today i'm going to do part of an edwardian full breakfast now that is a challenge i mean this is an edwardian full breakfast edwardian of course the edward is edward vii he'd have chicken he'd have pusan he'd have guinea fowl he'd have woodcock in season he'd have what they call meat in jelly i think this is pigeon in aspic all that and you're going to do a boiled egg now michael not just any boiled egg i'm gonna do off on cocot with smoked haddock wow okay that doesn't sound like an anti-climax how do you do it the first thing i'm going to do is poach my natural smoked haddock okay that's not very yellow is it well no uh if it's yellow some food coloring has been added so i'm just gonna poach this this won't take long maybe two or three minutes what are you poaching it in i'm poaching it in just give my hands a bit of a wash um i'm poaching it in some uh milk drop of cream some peppercorns and one bay leaf so i'm going to chop some chives while i wait for that to cook i don't rather ridiculed it as just a boiled egg but it's quite a substantial dish in itself i mean imagine eating all this kind of stuff as well as the earth on for breakfast i can't i can't breakfast has evolved so much down the centuries hasn't it when you had the early hanoverian kings in the 18th century they would have breakfasted off cold meat and cheese and beer well the water well the water wasn't very safe so that was a good excuse for having beer at breakfast and then when you got into the later hanoverians the prince regent he'd have cake and hot chocolate and loads of booze when he died he was 24 stoned you know oh my goodness built like a barrel i'm not surprised if he was eating cake and booze for breakfast but it wasn't until the victorians that we really started to get the modern breakfast and bacon and eggs and all that sort of stuff but bertie later edward vii he went in for things in a big way is that boiling over no it's just about to come up now i'm going to take it off um and the liquid you live dangerously you look dangerous the liquid that we're actually uh cooking the haddock in we're going to make a bechamel sauce with ah i like bechamel sauce originally done by a french aristocrat and named after a financier in louis xiv's court you're meant to say do you know everything michael do you know everything michael no but i can look it up [Laughter] oh guess what there's butter in this dish absolutely bechamel sauce is basically butter and flour into a roux and then you cook the roux out just for um a few minutes and then you pour hot liquid on top so that's kind of a really important part it's a it's a common mistake that people make that they think bechamel is just they pour their cold milk on top of it and what you'll get is a lumpy bechamel it's a lovely creamy saucer isn't it oh it is a lovely creamy sauce and it's extremely versatile so i'm just going to stir in probably about half of this i'd say so that is warmed milk yes this is the this is the the actual poaching liquid that we cooked our hadakin so this will be a slightly thicker bechamel than i would normally make because the juices that are going to come out of the fish when it cooks soaking up do they yeah so that's done there that's cooked out silky silky smooth so i'm going to add almost all of this to the bowl but i'm going to save a little bit back why because i'm going to top it up at the end so now we're going to flake our fish into the bechamel yes you don't want to scrunch it up too much do you no you want to keep it it does it does come apart beautifully doesn't it into those haddock flakes it's a wonderful fish havoc isn't it it is a wonderful fish and the smell of that is just such a nice uh mellow uh pleasing smoked fish it's not like a like a smack in the face that some of those kind of artificially smoked and dyed haddock can be like so i'll just give it a gentle fold so this is going in the bottom this is going in the bottom of our cuts now is cacot the dish cacao is the dish but a cacao can be a number of different dishes it doesn't have to be just a dish with a handle it could just be like large ramekins but it has to be this more or less this size um more or less this size and always round i think as well yeah yeah well you wouldn't want corners because you wouldn't be able to get it get it your lovely sauce or some of it would escape into the corner you wouldn't get your spoon in there that would be a real shame now we're going to crack our beautiful duck eggs these lovely big eggs do they have to be duck eggs they don't have to be what's the advantage duck eggs are bigger there's another definition of coconut oh yeah it's a french slang term for a lady of the night oh really anyway we won't go into that oh no ah some parmesan just on top ah now that's gonna give it a real absolute bit of flavor isn't it absolutely so it goes into a bainery which already has hot water in it and this will help kind of speed up the process right so you've already boiled some water a little bit beforehand so it doesn't have to come up from cold okay and a bain-marie it's a bath mary's bath okay um so if you wouldn't mind popping it into the oven and it's hot you say something so it is it's already hot so oh one last piece i nearly forgot oh don't forget don't forget i'm going to put a little bit of oh you saved some of this a little bit more sauce to go on top i just don't want to waste any of this just go around the i've edges to the whisk now yes i have i'm not beating something up i'm not happy michael no i've noticed this you're a rather aggressive woman on the quiet i think i wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of your whisk okay it's a little bit just on top that's a clever idea though isn't it thank you for saying so michael so you want to pop that in the oven you'll find another one already in there that you can bring back okay oven should be at 170 degrees and we'd cook that for 10 maybe 12 minutes okay okay don't burn yourself yeah thanks very much they look really really good okay that's great news it's a race against time this nice work there we go we're gonna finish it with some chives and i'm actually going to finish it with just a little bit more parmesan oh i can't help myself i love parmesan too okay yep now take them out yep one two three and i have some toast that i have just covered for you so um would you like me to cut them into soldiers for you since it's breakfast oh yes please great terrific you have a soldier okay i have a soldier we'll stand to attention after you okay oh oh perfect do you know i thought for a moment they were hard-boiled i thought you never doubt me michael i've learned that i've learned that i'm gonna balance it on there the fishy taste has come up even though i didn't get any fish that time love the bechamel love the eggy i'm going to eat them separately great combination i don't think i'll have room for the guinea fowl the cabins the chickens the woodcock who needs that when you've got earth on cocot with smoked haddock a breakfast fit for a king [Music] a staple at the royal breakfast table today is a good cup of tea a tradition that was established by the middle of the 18th century a home-grown cupper has tickled the tastebuds of one of our modern day royals michelin starred chef paul ainsworth is in cornwall to find out more about this regal brew 200 years ago when society's most fashionable members began to take to tea no one would have ever imagined that one day we'd be growing our own but that's exactly what's happening right here just up the road from where i live the tea plant is actually a variety of camellia called camellia sinensis britain's first tea plantation is in the botanical gardens on the trigothan estate near truro jonathan jones is the man behind the 100 acre project so when did you plant the first tea and how's that evolved over the centuries well the first camellias for ornamental purposes over two centuries ago but the first camellia for tea was actually only in 1999. the first tea was produced from that and sold in 2005. you know we've been able to put the englishness into english tea for the first time you know create the most british tea in history and people thought well who cares about tea but if you're british it's what's in our veins almost we grow up with it don't we we brits might drink a lot of tea but it's only in the last 20 years that we've started growing it and the success of the plantation here is partly due to the cornish weather why is the climate so good here for growing tea if you look at our daily weather temperature we're usually warmer than darjeeling in india which is kind of the champagne of tea so we have lots of things growing here bigger and better than they actually do in the himalayas the estate here has been owned by one family the boss gowens for nearly 700 years renowned as botanical innovators they cultivated the uk's first outdoor camellias so it's no surprise they pioneered british tea growing but before paul gets to try a brew there's picking to be done hard work but therapeutic isn't it it is yeah yeah thank you very much is there a cup of tea at the end it definitely is i hope so so jonathan have you come to the attention of the royal family yes in fact the royals drink a lot of tea and they love it this bush right here yeah was planted by prince philip and six or eight weeks ago we processed this especially for him presented it as the most royal tea ever grown in the uk and the taste was amazing thank goodness and he he actually said tastes like tea [Music] once the tea leaves are plucked for a black tea they're allowed to wither before being rolled and then dried and your smell should be great isn't it man yeah that's amazing the amount of rolling and drying is one factor in determining how the tea will taste i imagine even like that you you could pour some pour some hot water over that let it infuse that would be quite green yeah but if you kept it a few hours in fact accidentally i often put it in my pocket or a coke and the next morning i think where's that tea smell coming from please tell me you take it out of your pocket yes of course i do [Music] from bush to cup the process of making black tea can be as little as 36 hours paul and jonathan have a selection of home-grown teas to mix together to make a breakfast brew it doesn't look very strong but this will blow their socks off so a little bit of that it's a punchy complex tea that can withstand a dash of milk and compete with coffee we've got now six or so different gardens in here from around the estate we put a little bit of a salmon there about five to ten percent of assembly for massam itself from congeal yeah and that should complete the blend and be a true breakfast tea yeah fit for royalty in fact so tell me jonathan other than prince philip planting a bush here what other royal connections are there prince charles the other day in fact only on tuesday tasted some of our new breakfast tea does he have a favorite earl grey loves it with honey so now we've got this infused let's see what we've got and there's licorice looking good yeah and the smell that is amazing so now we have to taste go ahead you are a master that was all by eye as well that is lovely i'm sorry but i'd have that any day over a cup of coffee fantastic yeah i would i would that is amazing a breakfast tea that makes a stir in buckingham palace and gets the paul ainsworth seal of approval how can we possibly top that a recipe combining coffee bacon and polenta might just do it anna you you've got a dish now uh that doesn't use tea it uses coffee yeah the other thing that gets people up in the mornings what are you going to do that's right i'm going to do a coffee and maple glazed bacon which is a really good brunch dish brunch not breakfast but brunch exactly so how does it go so i'm going to roast some tomatoes first so i'll cut them in half now this goes well with bacon what's the what's the story here well this absolutely goes well with bacon i think it's the kind of natural sweetness of tomatoes that make the saltiness of the bacon sing so they're a good marriage well bacon you know it's kind of everybody's favorite breakfast thing you know butters in the morning and everything i mean not just uh not just us but the royals as well you remember prince harry was um best man at william's wedding well he was put in charge of some of the wedding festivities and all that sort of stuff particularly the following morning where he organized very special bacon butters for what i think he called the party survivors the bacon was special because it was called pea meal bacon it was cured with ground dried peas but it used in the olden days be a way of curing bacon before refrigeration so you could ship it abroad and that's what they had the morning after the wedding but you're doing something slightly different that's right yeah so i've just seasoned the tomatoes before we pop them in the oven okay and i'm going to put a little bit of pepper on them which is quite nice and some thyme just over the top you don't have to do much just leave the time over the top of the tomatoes so they'll just kind of infuse with the flavor right but what's really important is a drizzling of olive oil so this will actually help the thyme kind of get inside the tube kind of infused so this go the oven yep if you want to pop that in the oven it should be at 180 and i think about six to eight minutes okay six to eight minutes yeah here we go right where's the bacon so yep we're just heating up our pan the pan needs to be really hot that bacon smells smells really good now this is streaky yes i'm a big fan of streaky bacon the ratio of fat and meat just makes it so much more tasty oh and it smells so wonderful doesn't it yep there's something about bacon in particular yeah good quality bacon yeah you can always tell by the water content that's in it so if this was a lesser quality bacon by now water would be coming out of it where you can still see that this smoke that's coming off is that it's frying we've become you know really quite keen on going out for breakfast and brunch apparently we spend 76 million pounds a day going out for breakfast and brunch a day a day so i'm going to strain off a little bit of this uh fat yeah but also i'm going to add the coffee in now now is that just the flavor or what's what what's what's the story with the coffee i really believe that coffee is a great uh flavor to go with bacon um not too much not too much uh but yes when i would ever cure my own bacon at home i would always put coffee and maple in the cure and what is it about the combination of those two flavors do you think that that well i actually think maple tastes of coffee if you have a smell there yeah i actually think maple is a similar flavor it's coffee yes there is something similar to it yeah i hadn't i've never thought of that before and it all says breakfast yeah that's looking real yeah this is looking good these are just about ready actually maybe we should chuck on those tomatoes yes yeah yeah you're right how do they look they look pretty good to me yep yeah look at this wonderful one yeah color and they smell nice too where do you want them um on the board would be perfect okay okay there we go so next i'm going to make the polenta right there's lots of different ways to make polenta so today i'm going to make it with chicken stock and a little bit of butter i just think the flavor goes really well with bacon but perhaps closer to dinner time you might want to add more dairy maybe a bit of milk some parmesan things like that a heavier version of it so this is a lighter one but this is a lighter bruncher version now tell me what you have to watch out for with polenta well you need to be fast when you first add it in and then it's about kind of stirring it every so often to make sure that it's fully cooked um i'm going to put a pinch of salt in our stock for seasoning and you want to bring your liquid up to boil so i'm going to shoot the plant in really quickly and just give it a whisk and the one thing you don't do gradually no important to really stir it around and whisk it up at this stage yeah because you don't want it to go lumpy you can almost see the polenta sucking the liquid in thickening up almost immediately oh gosh yes look at that as it starts to thicken yeah i'll start to add in a little bit of butter give it a bit more um richness [Music] i think it's looking good though yeah it is looking pretty good done done right we are ready to serve okay okay so oh yes look at the way it's sliding gracefully down isn't it we have our beautiful crispy glazed bacon which is what you always want and then we have our tomatoes oh that's terrific isn't it yeah and would you have this with some crusty bread or absolutely crusty bread nice cup of tea well i was thinking more of a glass of wine if it was brunch and then just to reinforce that lovely thyme flavor a little bit of thyme on top oh terrific are you ready i am more than ready yeah okay there you have it you have a coffee and maple glazed bacon with polenta after you okay i love bacon yeah so do i can i get in there well it's really nice isn't it the bacon has got that marvelous bacon tang it's just an overlay of glazing and sweetness and a bit of the tomato for another bit of freshness and the thyme is just wonderful there's a taste on the top fabulous for brunch fabulous for the survivors of a royal wedding party that's what i'm gonna have for breakfast next rich and luxurious this is a royally tasty upscaling of that great breakfast staple the bacon butty [Music] a good bacon sandwich requires good bread and prince charles it seems is very particular about his bread [Music] carolyn robb a former private chef to the prince and princess of wales and their children remembers rising to the challenge to cook the family's favorite loaf today i'm making soda bread which is a great favorite of mine and it brings back a lot of fond memories from making it at highgrove for the prince wales was his favorite bread and it was something that we always had around it's really quick just mix everything together and it goes straight into the oven first of all i'm putting the plain white flour in save that through okay i'm also going to serve the malted granary flour although it's got bits in it um it's still good just pop it through the sieve and before i put that through i'm also going to add in two teaspoons of bicarb and i'm going to sieve this now i'm going to add in a teaspoon of salt i've got some my sea salt crystals now i'm going to put the fresh herbs in some time because one of the nicest things about making bread at high growth meant you could leave the kitchen for a while and go out in the garden to pick some fresh herbs i always really enjoyed [Music] next i'm going to add in some chives obviously chives bring a slightly oniony flavour to the bread but it's quite subtle i've added the herbs in next i'm going to add a little bit of butter now the last thing to do is to add in the liquid most breads you spend a lot of time kneading it whereas with this bread it's the opposite we don't want to overwork it so the less handling it has the more soft the bread will be so just going to mix this in with a knife this is buttermilk if you can't get buttermilk or don't have any it does work with yogurt or yogurt and milk as well and it's really important that once the liquid has been added we work really quickly as soon as you do that the bicarb starts to activate i'm going to tip the dough out onto the board and finish off working it by hand it's a fine line between getting it just right and just too sticky or just too dry another thing i really enjoyed about making this bread was that the flour that we used came from shipton mill they used to mill the wheat from high growth there so it was very special to be able to go out and buy bags of flour where you knew that the wheat was actually home grown never used such good flour as that anywhere else once carolyn has shaped the dough into a large ball she places it on a buttered baking sheet okay just slash it that way and cuts a traditional cross into the dough and the same again before sprinkling it with sesame seed and linseed she then pops it into a preheated oven at 200 degrees celsius [Music] [Music] dead dog oh pippy the soda bread is baked for 30 to 40 minutes until golden [Music] i'm just going to test to see if this is cooked the way we do that is turn it upside down and tap it and it makes a really nice hollow sound so we know that that's cooked when i made the bread for prince charles we would either make it into sandwiches he had a very special sandwich that he always had at lunch time really delicious with homemade pesto and parmesan otherwise it was used for toast it looks perfect inside so you can see a little bit of mottling from the fresh herbs in the bread and you can also see the nice crunchy bits from the malted granary flour the only way to really test this is to try a piece which i will do now and i do love warm bread it's very difficult to stop at one piece when it's just out of the oven that's really nostalgic that takes me back that lovely smell of thyme and the malted granary flower definitely takes me back to my time in the kitchens at highgrove [Music] there's an endless fascination isn't there anna with the these glimpses into the inner workings of the royal family yeah i think people want to kind of feel like they're real human or they can see similarities in them and their family and that makes them feel i guess more connected different from us though i mean if you get into some of their tastes and everything prince charles is said to have anyway whenever he goes away you have a breakfast box with six kinds of honey in it that's pretty picky and fastidious yes it is but maybe i'm a little bit like charles i i like to bring tea wherever i go oh you do yes i do so you know what kind of tea um tea from home the same tea that i drank when i was a young girl yeah but it actually we tend to think this is all very modern you know the mass media and what prince charles does and all that sort of stuff but we actually know quite a lot about what queen victoria liked and didn't like because her her diaries were published i mean she liked for instance uh something called brussels biscuits what are they it's kind of similar to a biscuity it's a twice baked biscuit twice baked biscuit yeah marijuana toast perfect it feels as though we know a lot more today about royal domestic life because of i know the newspapers the radio the television and their interest but excerpts from queen victoria's diaries were published during her lifetime and these documents fulfilled much the same purpose in the past as they do today royal pr revealing selected titbits about her favorite snacks was a way of giving the nation the tiniest peak behind the palace walls but it wasn't the first time the lid had been ever so carefully lifted on the secrets of the royal kitchen social historian dr polly russell went to the british library to leaf through a regal cookbook from 1655. this beautiful little book here is called the queen's closet opened and it was written by someone called wm now the queen that it's referring to is henrietta maria and its intent aside from being a cookery book was really to try and rehabilitate henrietta maria in the eyes of the nation and what the book does is invite you into the most intimate private space of the queen it was published in 1655 by which time charles the first had been executed and henrietta maria was living in exile but once puritan rule had taken over in britain there was an opportunity to try and bring her back as a domestic goddess [Music] there are two parts to this book in the first edition the first is about medicinal remedies the second part of the book was for conserving and preserving and making sweets and some of the examples would be to candy sockets of oranges lemons citrons and angelica well given that sugar is fantastically expensive and that oranges and lemons would also have to be imported from abroad you get a sense of how wealthy you would have to be to be able to make much of this food with the monarchy overthrown it was the perfect time for some positive royal pr the public's interest was piqued and the book was a commercial triumph this small very beautiful cookery book played its part in re-establishing the royal family amazingly though this isn't the first time that we have evidence of cookery being important in establishing the reputation of the royals the british library is also home to the oldest english cookery book in existence it's so pressure so special that i'm not allowed to touch it only a specially trained conservator can actually hold it it's a 20-foot vellum scroll vellum being calfskin written by the scribes of richard ii in 1390. i mean this is absolutely thrilling that the scroll is called the form of curry which was the medieval word for cookery and this really is a document which takes us back into the medieval kitchen there are 196 recipes ingredients like cranes and herons and porpoises i mean this really is a different time of eating the 14th century was a tumultuous era up to half the population had been wiped out by the black death and the peasant's revolt of 1381 had rattled the ruling classes the scroll and its recipes were designed to emphasize the power of the royal family and cement the status quo there's a recipe for something called pondorage which was effectively a sort of pork meatball roasted and turned on a spit while somebody would have painted it with a mixture made of spinach that would have effectively created a green ball that would have looked like an apple and so these kind of games and trickery evidence that richard ii is powerful and clever and important another book featuring recipes from the court of the restored king charles ii was a reflection of the public's fascination with all things royal lamb's royal cookery published in 1710 contains recipes from one of the longest serving royal chefs of all time patrick lamb there's a recipe here for olio it involves a neck of mutton pork six whole cabbages two dozen larks i mean it's quite extraordinary and in the end you pile it into some enormous sort of mountain of flesh and vegetables and then you put hogs ears and trotters on the top so lamb's food is absolutely about display however in amongst this extraordinary opulence there's a recipe here for spinach toast it involves cooking spinach and mixing that with eggs and topping that onto bread so it sounds almost as though it could be a snack featuring everything from the smallest dish to the most lavish banquet books like these certainly had the potential to shape public opinion of the monarchy and some of the recipes have stood the test of time including a centuries-old royal snack an apricot glazed apple pastry now anna you're going to make a recipe from patrick lamb remember he was that he was the chef to four monarchs in the 17th century produced a cookbook got it here didn't call him recipes look they were called receipts in all the particular branches of cookery now in use in the queen's palaces so i'm going to make taffeti tart today um it's a delicious i guess you could say snack perfect for elevenses and the first thing that i'm going to make is the caramel to cook the apples so i'm going to put the sugar into the pan the pan is already quite hot now so that it will hurry up the kind of caramel process and then as it starts to melt i will then add the butter and then when the butter is melted i will add our apples and we'll caramelize them down so they're nice and soft although it's out of patrick lamb's or 17th century cookbook i think it goes back a lot further than that 100 200 years earlier on tudor times henry viii elizabeth and all that kind of thing really old recipe there but it's hard to believe that something with so much kind of technique could have been done all those years ago so if you have a look at the plan now you can see the caramel is changing color yeah and you can smell that kind of lovely caramel buttery smell it's perfect it's pretty sophisticated for a very old say this is pretty sophisticated um well can you do it michael i'm sorry apple's going in now you can see lovely hot foaming caramel that apple's going to go in now now what apples are they these are bramley apples so they're quite tart so as this is cooking down i'm going to cut the pastry okay okay so we have some puff pastry over here now instead of using flour we're actually going to use icing sugar yeah i saw you scattering the icing sugar so this is kind of a i guess an another way of rolling pastry but that it adds like just a little bit more sugar into the pastry because traditionally puff pastry doesn't really have any sugar in it so i'm going to just give it a little snack for somebody with a sweet tooth isn't it that's it that caramel and all this icing sugar and everything there we go okay so i'm just going to cut it around all this sugar of course would have made it very very expensive in 17th century and even 18th century terms well i think we take for granted the convenience that we can just buy a bag of sugar down the road i mean where sugar came from back then wasn't just down the road so it wasn't that easy just to get your hands on it was only the wealthy really wasn't it absolutely um so i've cut the disc there that's ready to go so the apple will take probably i'd say another at least five ten minutes to cook down when it's lovely and soft and brown then you need to cool it completely you can't make it with a hot mix what would happen if you tried well the pastry would fall apart you know the butter and the pastry would melt so i actually have a bit of mix that i made earlier on and all that i'm going to add together lovely yeah nice and brown caramelized well it's going to smell even better now and i add a little bit of lemon zest so a bit of lemon zest goes in just to give it a bit more kind of of a perfume flavor lift it a bit yeah give that a bit more okay and now i'm going to give it a stir and then i'm going to spoon the mix on you're doing it exactly the way they did it in the uh 17th century do you think would patrick lam if he was looking over your shoulder saying oh yeah do it that way well this is my version so [Laughter] i'm sure he would approve i'm sure he would approve okay i'm gonna put a little bit more apple in it now and then i'm just gonna egg wash the edges to kind of seal the next layer on top that looks really rich doesn't it yeah and it smells good and so you're gonna place the top of the pastry yeah on top there just just give it a little bit make it all neat a little bit of pressure yeah [Music] okay that looks really really good then place another sheet of grease proof on top and then your baking tray on top again because you want to kind of give it a nice bit of pressure so it's lovely and flat and michael but it's relatively simple isn't it i mean patrick lam did these fantastically elaborate coronation dinners and everything but this was when he was just doing snacks yeah well for a snack i think it's still quite an elaborate snack if you think this is in instead of having a simple biscuit at you know 11 o'clock that this is you know a bit of work puff pastry caramelize your apples a super chef's dish fit for a queen fit for queen so um we're going to bake that in the oven at about 180 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes okay now what you up to so our glaze has come up to boil now so this is ready that looks wonderfully gloopy doesn't it yeah it's delicious a little bit apricot glaze okay so i'm just going to brush this on top and this just gives it a lovely shine gives it a lovely finish it's going to make a mess though isn't it well i don't think so i think we're my favorite down the front i think the dark jumper is perhaps a big big big mistake okay so give this a nice oh doesn't that sound good wow nice crunch yep this looks good oh i'd rather have this than a ginger biscuit at 11 o'clock so um what goes very nice with this is some caramelized apple which is lovely a little bit of even more sweetener but these are sweet apples these aren't bramley apples that we're garnishing this with and then we're going to have a little bit of clotted cream not for slimmers this one is it no certainly not [Music] and there you have it taffety tart with caramelized apples and clotted cream why taffety by the way well i think it got its name from taffeta the material because it was similar in appearance it was lovely and kind of smooth and had this kind of crisp stiff kind of texture of it okay oh dear how did we get in it spoons here we are i've got a knife okay yep shall i go in first all right sorry no no no no no chivalrous to the end i just love the crunch of that the sound is just glorious that is so good you can have a nice little spoon there michael that's smaller than your spoon you'll notice that way i can have more that's delicious the caramelized apple is just perfect oh yeah there's a good one oh try it with the cluttered cream in fact i'm going to try it again i should have said i haven't oh it's squidgy but flaky come on you little beauty oh with recipes like this you can't quite see why here's a shaft of four monarchs all the way from the 17th century but perfect for today have it for lenses skip lunch join us next time for more royal recipes

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 402,255

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, queen victoria, henry viii, queen victorias favorite food, queen victoria secrets, henry viii diet, historical cooking, historical cooking recipes, historical cooking show, british royals, most famous royal families, edwardian cooking, royal recipes, easter recipes, easter celebration, royal family, the crown, history documentaries, queen victoria documentary

Id: A4A_KSDL47Q

Length: 216min 30sec (12990 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2022