Queen Victoria's Mysterious Chocolate Surprise Dessert | Royal Upstairs Downstairs | Real Royalty

[Music] just what do you have to do when a queen decides she's going to pop in to see you and not just any old queen victoria like a pair of obsessed victoria groupies we're pursuing her around the country to the posh pads she visited we'll be delving into her personal diaries to reveal what happened behind closed doors and today we're at stoney abbey in the lovely county of warwickshire [Music] and as someone who's spent a lifetime getting excited by antiques i'll be upstairs exploring just what would have excited the queen on her visit here what we've got here is a rare repton red book and as a chef who's passionate about all sorts of food i'll be heading downstairs where i'll be rediscovering an extraordinary 19th century recipe that was served to victoria you know what is mind-boggling and testing our raw pudding on tin absolutely wonderful look at it [Music] when the 39 year old victoria came to stonely she'd been queen for 21 years she was with albert but without any of her nine children the royal train took her from london to coventry then she travelled onto stony by horse and carriage for this three-day visit so here it is stoneleigh abbey victoria came here with albert in june 1858 and this is what they would have seen this extraordinary halves part norman part jacobian and part early 18th century their host was william henry lee and his wife caroline i'm so excited because we know a lot about victoria's visit because someone in the house kept a journal it was william's sister georgina and the book survives to this day and this is what she wrote the 14th 15th and 16th of june 1858 were days long to be remembered in the annals of stoneleigh abbey nature itself donned her loveliest garb to do honor to our beloved queen victoria upon her first visit to warwickshire it's a fabulous journal part diary park gossip column and it's going to be our insider guide to victoria and albert's stay at stoney abbey [Music] it was a very regal and well-arranged arrival and her party would have swept through to the front door well the backhand stop would have gone to the servant's quarters which is exactly where i'm going to the queen was at stoney abbey as part of a tour of the midlands she was here to open aston hall a former stately home and park to the public the middle and lower classes were enjoying far more leisure time as the century progressed and queen victoria was keen to support the revival of an estate in decline for the benefit of the people victoria was in a very good mood when she arrived as we can tell from her own diary entry she commented that the air was delicious the house very large and fine and the oak trees were magnificent for the leaves then so far so good oh the first thing that would have struck victoria on entering this entrance hall is the temperature because it's so deliciously cool on the 14th of june 1858 the temperatures were soaring the top end of 96 degrees the poor woman would have been baking after her journey and would have welcomed this delicious cool with open this beautiful paneled hall is the entrance used by the royal party and this illustration of georgina's journal recorded victoria and albert's majestic meet and greet georgina says she greeted us all with great courtesy saying a few kind and gracious words to each of us as we were presented to her we're not sure who drew it but i rather think they enlarged the hall to fit the lee's aspirations because of course what's happened is that the artist has used some artistic license he simply broadened the whole by changing the perspective to make it look more impressive for his readers actually it's already quite impressive just look at the quality of the carving of this oak all this paneling was brought to stoney from another of the family's properties in the 1830s but i wonder if queen victoria admired this little fellow just look at his expression it's like some extraordinary dopey dog with a hook nose look and then these gorgeous mustaches which droop moistly but then strange owl-like eyes and these odd curlicue bits that come down away from his muzzle charming while tim gets to grips with life above stairs i'm discovering what life was like below stairs for the staff and the servants during victoria's visit to stoneleigh now here i am in the courtyard outside the old servant's quarters georgina tells us in her diary that on the morning of the visit she was due at any minute and the servants were still scurrying around hanging curtains moving furniture rearranging paintings and making gorgeous flower arrangements it must have been bedlam [Music] the sermon's quarters have now been converted into apartments but then they would have been buzzing with activity victoria might not have been aware of the organized chaos but clearly she appreciated the results commenting in her diary we were taken to our charming rooms beautifully furnished and decorated the leagues were determined to reflect their status in their handsome home upstairs and they also wanted to create a cunnery impression that would make them stand out from the warwickshire crowd and to prove i'm not making this up amazingly we have these original menus for victoria's visit the meal was broken down into a group of five courses followed by a further four courses in what was known as the premier and second service the victorian kitchens no longer exist at stoneleigh but food historian ivan day and i will be in the conservatory creating one of the actual dishes made for victoria and albert so let's have a closer look at that marvelous menu and here here they are this is the one for the dinner on june the 14th 1858. look at it you've got your potages which is the purees and the soups isn't it to begin with poisson turbot and what are base well relatives are very large dishes often roasts and big braised dishes which were brought in to replace the soup terrain because once the soup had been served they'd taken away a big space on the table so you brought in the relevant the queen says in her diary that they dined after aid and that everything was very handsome and well done it's not really a surprise she was happy there's so much to choose from with menus as extensive as these meals could take several hours to munch through goodness knows how they cope with their heartburn but as they work their way through the menu dishes got lighter and sweeter and thank goodness for that so there's a gatto this is a cake made with puff pastry and this one here which is a bavar de chocolat osapres and that's what we'll be creating today a chocolate surprise that will make tim's mouth water and even more amazingly we know every single ingredient this is a bill from a london confectioner to the family for bought in confectionery and equipment for the occasion one of the ingredients in the bavar are pistachio nuts and extraordinary there are two pounds of pistachio kernel and it's 12 shillings and what is really extraordinary i couldn't believe this my hair's still done in one of the flavorings in the world is this liqueur made from morello cherries which is called maraschino and look one pint of maraschino oh fantastic i just could not believe it look at this lots of ingredients lots to do so we better get cracking back upstairs victoria described stoneley abbey as very large and very fine however it was not on the scale of some of the grandiose houses she was used to in fact with more than 30 for dinner lord and lady lee were faced with a problem they didn't have a dining room they felt was big enough and so they had to use this the saloon a sparsely furnished large reception space but actually when it was laid out with a dining table this rather offended our diarist georgina who wrote this was to be regretted as its great beauty and space as a reception room would thereby be lost but i rather think this beautiful salon would have made the meal go with a swing if this illustration in georgina the host's sister's journal is anything to go by the room is embellished with marvelous plasterwork featuring stories from mythology which the queen like many victorians had an interest in this would surely impress any guest whose gaze wandered during the royal meal for victoria though when she looked up at this ceiling and saw the apotheosis of hercules she said she thought it would be better if it was guilt poor old lord lee despite a herculean effort to impress her madge it seems he hadn't covered every detail [Music] the dinner served on the first night of the queen's three-day visit made up for any lack of sparkle in the salon the original menu details a whopping 39 dishes and we're making one of the desserts above wad de chocolat it has some incredible ingredients detailed on the original shopping list for the occasion including of course chocolate but the victorians couldn't just buy a bar at the local news agents they had to make it from scratch it was a very labor-intensive process luckily ivan's doing the laboring first take the cacao beans chop into small pieces called nibs put onto a sandstone slab called a matate heat using a small charcoal brazier rolled nibs with a south american rolling pin called a molo so they release the cocoa butter crush cocoa butter into the remains of the nibs and handmade chocolate done it took me two hours to make that amount really can i can i have a little taste yeah tell me what you think oh it's good isn't it that is delicious our chocolate will be the basis of our dessert firstly we add it to the warm milk until it melts then we add spices and lemon peel for extra zing so you've got your vanilla pod your cinnamon and your lemon we are told to sweeten it to taste now the way that was done was they would use syrup rather than sugar because it it's already dissolved then that all-important booze this cherry-flavored liqueur that was the taste for the victorian high tables did queen victoria like her alcohol she was quite worried about things like over drinking oh right she wanted to keep she know she loved her food but only very plain and simple food our chocolate surprise pudding was certainly not a plain or simple dish but like most victorian aristocracy the leaves were using their food to show off and to confirm their status to victoria and albert now our chocolate surprise won't set on its own we are using something called eisenglass and it looks absolutely extraordinary so what is eyes and glass you're not going to believe this but it's actually the sturgeon's bladder and the big fish that live in the caspian sea which we get caviar from yes absolutely the bladders are nearly as valuable and it makes the most incredibly good jelly and the french called it col de poisson and it was the most popular setting agent because it's relatively easy to use particularly before mass-produced gelatin came in the 1870s this was what those early cooks use how on earth did they discover this setting agent for doing this where did it come from well it's been known about since classical antiquity and this is it that is a piece of sturgeon's bladder this is this is sturgeon's bladder and it does make a fantastic set it's very very good just preparing it was very labor-intensive it's put into a bowl of cold water soaked overnight and placed into boiling water until it has dissolved then finally it's clarified the eyes and glass is added to the chocolate filling and stirred until thick the mixture is put to one side for three hours to cool once cooled whipped cream is folded into the chocolate mixture and poured into the pudding mold which is then placed into a bowl of ice there were no fridges in those days fantastic and how long has it got to set for it will need about three hours three more hours not sure if his nibs upstairs will be able to wait that long victoria had been on the throne for over 20 years by the time she came to stoney this picture of her from the lee family archive seems to me to show a queen with high expectations and indeed she had become how can i put it quite particular in her preferences palace officials were sent ahead to make sure everything was done just as her maj stipulated in particular in her bedroom where the lees had made some rather hasty alterations and this is what the queen's bedroom would have looked like except that at the time of her visit it was one floor up but the furnishings in it are exactly what she would have seen what we've got i reckon is lord lee running out of time here i think he'd got such a small period in which to furnish these spaces that instead of ordering brand new furniture for the queen what he did was to take x-stand existing old-fashioned pieces of furniture around the mansion house and have them dollied up now what is the style of this bed it's chippendale and as so often happens in these stately homes just because it looks like chippendale it's been attributed to chippendale the maker actually what we've discovered is the original bill from the real maker in 1763 which was william gom and there's the bill if you look at the piece of furniture itself underneath the gilt and the paint and the gesso which is that chalky stuff the timber is dark nut brown that's because this furniture that now looks white and guilt once upon a time was dark brown it was expensive mahogany and no cabinet maker in the 18th century would have covered expensive polished mahogany in this stuff in a million years this is the work of the victorian decorator charles mockson who lordly employed basically to spit up the whole house to make this place fit for a queen it wasn't just the bed frame that needed attention the queen traveled with her own upholsterer whose duties are explained by georgina our diarist and sister of lord lee she says the impulstra's duty was to pack and unpack the queen's boxes he also superintended the making and arrangements of the queen's bed she had sheets and blankets of her own with her and the upholsterer had to sew them together in a peculiar way according to royal fancy we can only surmise what that peculiar way was as georgina doesn't divulge the three-day visit to stoneleigh was part of a wider tour of the midlands and just like any major tour she needed more than just an upholsterer team victoria consisted of team royal rhodes as georgina explains her retinue of servants was not small they numbered altogether 18 the queen's dresser the queen's ladies maid two pages in ordinary the princess ballots eight men's servants in livery a quaffer a clothes brusher an upholsterer a special messenger and inspector of police and in addition to that she brought her own horses and ten grooves and they would have been housed here the staples at stoneleigh were state-of-the-art built in 1820 just 38 years before victoria's visit the yard is built in a d-shape to give the carriages plenty of room to turn round and it's very nice indeed but after all when it was built horses were crucial for getting about so they had to be very well looked after even the air they breathed was controlled by a clever ventilation system air was blown upwards and not towards the horse's middles which might have given the poor things colic there were owls with their own owl boxes to keep the mice at bay and they weren't the only ones to live above the stables the stable boys did too you know i think they looked after the horses better than they did the stable boys after dinner on both nights of her visit local dignitaries lined up to meet the queen they assembled in the library and it was here that lady georgina rather cattley i fear records how disappointed she was by the appearance of the ladies i am sorry to record that the good county of warwick did not show to great advantage in the beauty of its ladies many of the fairest and highest in the county were unavoidably absent meow well if the ladies didn't cut the mustard at least the gardens did unlike some of the hasty preparations for the visit they had been created in style many years before the year that she visited was effectively the 50th anniversary of humphrey repton's visit to stonely and the alterations that he made here to the landscape repton was a famous landscape gardener and his claim to fame was his fabulous before and after books an ingenious marketing ploy that certainly sold his ideas to his clients just look at this here we are at the south west corner of stoneleigh abbey as it was the dammed up end of the elite and a character standing in a blue frock coat holding an umbrella which is humphrey repton himself he's directing the workers in pegging out the edges of the alterations so that ultimately what lord lee will see is this [Music] what more tantalizing and delicious sales technique could you have than this the lee family carried out most of repton's ideas including diverting the river avon to create a lake in front of the house we know from the host's sister georgina's dairy that the queen walked here after dinner and assembled in the grounds were thousands of well-wishers who had been allowed to congregate georgina recounts no sooner did they hear that their beloved queen was so near to them they gave vent to their loyal feelings in a burst of loud and prolonged cheering she walked twice around the front garden in full view of the delighted multitude to whom she bowed repeatedly they sound delighted however on arrival at stonely the very same crowds had according to georgina been shocked to discover victoria didn't travel wearing a crown and carrying a scepter but instead were a bonnet and carried a parasol it obviously came as a surprise that she was dressed not as a magical monarch but a mere mortal like them let's do it okay we've got to get this dipped into the hot water to release it downstairs dishes for the queen's banquet took hours to prepare attention to detail was everything if the lee family were to impress the royal party look at that isn't that gorgeous the food itself was incredibly intricate the extra decorations would be painstakingly handcrafted we're using some original wooden molds to make collars for the chocolate surprise they're made from powdered sugar and gum from a south american tree now the dessert is free of its mold i'm filling the center with lemon cream before it's final titivating that's it perfect after it's been crowned with our sugar decorations we have delicate strawberry tarts to place around our majestic pudding i have to be very careful here i do not want to break anything just get it exactly in the middle imagine queen victoria sitting at the table these coming in the presentation it must have looked amazing you know what it's mind-boggling you've got to eat it next i will and i will enjoy it and after all that work i hope tim will too [Music] victoria's visit to stoney was heralded a great success by the lee family georgina tells us never certainly was there a more successful royal visit everything had gone off perfectly without one failing or drawback of any kind and our good queen all smiles and amiability [Music] i hope tim's all smiles when he sees what we've been making oh look there we go this is a bagwa the chocolate on surprise absolutely wonderful now let's go for it now the first thing i'm going to do is to remove this crown remove the cranberry right and what i'm going to do is give you that little strawberry especially for me yes i'm going to take a little bit of this cream and i'm going to put it on there and i'm going to cut a literally around and this is the victoria pudding that would have been produced exactly this is on the menu i mean this is amazing dessert now we're going to have the taste that is extraordinary isn't it you've got that chocolate with the refined lemon coming through it now i'm going to have a look at this um creamy middle which is really wicked looking [Music] which is very nice and lemony too i'm gonna have a go at my tart now right we'll have the berry off the top like that all right that sets a nice bit of tart in the mouth and then we have the tart itself hmm well rosemary this is quite splendiferous you have presented me with a victorian treat and for a change right i'm going to present you with a victorian treat now this thing was produced by lee's sister and the family was so incredibly proud of the fact that they'd had these royals the family prepared a magnificent scrapbook which i want you to revel in and if i have a bit of a flip you've got all these delicious images look oh wonderful got her look at albert albert looking so proud yes and so this thing goes on each of the memories exquisitely preserved what a wonderful record isn't it lovely oh and just look at this bit here they've actually preserved and pressed look at that the posie that she was carrying when she went off to birmingham to open aston hall i mean really special isn't it very very special and so very personal to the family and here's the pen used by the queen in the house do you know looking at this they were unbelievably proud they certainly weren't they wanted to preserve every element of it and also i think they thought they did a very good job [Music] to have entertained a monarch at the peak of her reign was an extraordinary honor and the lees must have dined out on it for generations to come and who can blame them next time we stay with the royal tour of the midlands as they visit warwick castle we're not visiting a traditional stately home oh no more like a full-blown [Music] fortress [Music] you

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 40,988

Rating: 4.9463487 out of 5

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, queen victoria, royal cooking, dessert baking, victorian cooking, royal family documentary

Id: jjp4G3gAWrE

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020