Queen Victoria's Complicated Pheasant Pie | 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 first-hand accounts to reveal what happened behind closed doors she was only 13 when she arrived here at shag Bravo in Stavanger as someone who spent a lifetime getting excited by antiques I'll be upstairs finding out how clever tricks might have fooled the future monarch not so much smoke and mirrors more like sealing and purrs and as a chef who loves all sorts of food I'll be downstairs where I'll be rediscovering a 19th century recipe that was served to Victoria do you want to lose no I want one no way took me two years to find one and seeing if Timmy's game enough to try it I say they did live well [Music] we're continuing our journey and the footsteps of the young Victoria as she as a slip of a girl had a tour of the nation with her mother the Duchess of Kent so that the people could see their future monarch the young Princess Victoria had traveled from the much grander and much larger Chatsworth has further north following a successful visit her hosts at Chhabra were Lord and Lady Litchfield a wealthy and well-connected family this was a much more modest home than many that Victoria had visited but I'm still keen as mustard to take her bird's-eye upstairs which is exactly what I'm going to do downstairs the local paper records that on her arrival at the hall a band played God saved the king and the Royal salute of guns was fired according to her recently begun diary Victoria and the royal party arrived in the late afternoon and she records at about half-past five we arrived at Shugborough the place of Lord of Litchfield Lord and Lady Litchfield helped the Duchess of Kent and the princess from their carriage the Darby mercury describing the 13 year old Victoria seen here with her mother as an interesting and intelligent looking child by the time of Victoria's visit Chad bruh had reached its peak as a modern estate and a fashionable country seat the family had worked hard in the previous 100 years at transforming what was once a planar medium sized has into something that would enhance their name and general standing and the architectural creek or they used starts at the entrance which looks very grand as long as you don't know have against it because there is something Sham about this facade if you tap the column it's not solid stone it's actually made of wood and the walls of the house itself were covered in slate to make them look like solid blocks of stone it was no doubt good enough to fool a 13 year old and inside the clever tricks to impress continued the first of us father and his architect did their utmost to confuse the are to cover up the fact that this house is once a bog-standard country but it simply become a bit grander and the way they did that was by installing this oval ceiling and all these pillars so to deceive the eye then not so much smoke and mirrors more like ceiling and pillars today chakra is still runners of working and historic estate with the staff still doing all the jobs that would have been done when Victoria was here and at that time like any respectable country pile it had an army of servants in fact for years before the visit in 1832 it was recorded that a hundred and nine full-time salaried staff were working on the estate this is where the unmarried staff would have slept in this stable yard the men would go that side and the women would sleep that side so there was no horsing around here thank you very much the staff wore different colored uniforms because it made it easier to spot if they were in their rightful place red was worn by the kitchen maids blue by the laundry maids green by the still room staff and purple by the house maids the housekeeper and the cooks had no official uniform this itself was a form of status men at chakra also had color coding into their uniforms but unlike the women they had expensive specialist uniforms from livery makers in London and the staff would have dined here the service hall was the hub of downstairs life with the young princess upstairs this place would have been abuzz with tension and gossip with a royal visit to cater for the household stocked up for lavish dining and Ivan day our food historian has got his hand on a wonderful document a list of the food and drink consumed during Victoria's three-day visit 76,000 38 partridges 10 has 54 fouls in fact it says at the bottom here a hundred ninety five head of game and poultry so I thought we'd do something with peasants fantastic today's royal delicacy is a dish invented by a famous French chef called Anton all karein who dominated this period it's called fill it's a pheasant a la shut rose and like so much Victorian cooking it's very complex and time-consuming shot Rose was a very elaborate vegetable dish where you used little disks or squares of cut out vegetables we got wonderful colors and you arrange them like a mosaic it's beautiful it's so neat the mold has been lined with paper that is smeared with butter and stuck to the butter are the vegetables cut into shapes the next stage is to fill the mold with pureed potato we've got to put a couple of egg yolks into there and it'll help to stiffen it up won't it yeah when it's true it'll set exactly and it's nicely seasoned with pepper and salt and it should be quite see it again right now this is the difficult bit because you have got to get all of that puree in there without disturbing slip it down the best way is to slide a little bit in at a time this dish was a hot entree served after three or four courses of what was frequently a nine course menu these were the fanciest savory dishes that the chef could muster up they'd eaten a lot of food already and these were just to whet your appetite really and you saw these beautiful patterns and colors and you felt hungry again right rosary well I think that's ready I'm going to put this on to poach for about fourteen minutes [Music] back upstairs the local dignitaries would have gathered here in the most impressive room in the house to meet the 13-year old princess it's the red drawing-room and this is who Victoria was calling upon lady Litchfield together with her boy Thomas and the most adorable looking little child there in the foreground who's Harriet Victoria actually played with during her visit here now you could say that some artists tend to flatter their subjects but this artist George hater I don't think did because Louise was always thought to be a bit of a cracker and indeed even Queen Victoria noted that Louisa was alluring and invariably incredibly kind the Earl and Lady Louisa were on friendly terms with Victoria's mother Litchfield family had been attacked at the Royal Court since the days of William the fourth and relished the idea of the Duchess and her precious daughter coming to stay this was a bit of a hastily arranged visit by the Duchess it started with an exchange of letters two months earlier and brilliantly for us we have copies of those very letters and indeed the Duchess a couple of months before the visit was writing as yet I have no fixed time for leaving this part of the country but if it be in our power and you should be at Agra we shall be happy to visit you the Litchfield's were delighted in fact they push their luck a bit and asked the royal party to stay for an additional day to wit the Duchess agreed now that was something of a coup it was in this very room that Victoria and her mother received the great and the good of the area seven carriage loads turned up to meet them including the mayor and the clergy and the whole thing was covered by the local press the Staffordshire advertiser proudly reported the scene quoting Victoria's mother's gracious response to the mayor's address it was rather telling the princess will derive the greatest benefit from these journeys they bring her in contact with all classes they are the means of allowing her to know all the varied interests of this great and free country the advertisers man on the spot gave his own observations of the princess he wrote the princess is a most interesting young person and her simple dress simple almost too plain this accords well with the pre possessing features of an amiable mild and intelligent cast given the limited access the public had to their future Queen such titbits about Victoria would have been a huge interest to ordinary folk [Music] downstairs I'm cooking a dish with Ivan that would have very likely graced the table during Victoria's visit Phil it's a pheasant allow shutters and the next stage is to puree some cooked chestnuts in a very Victorian fashion the first thing we use is something called a potato beetle which we just pound the chestnuts with yes so you have a go at it yes are you gonna turn those into a pulp and while you're doing now I've already got some here and I rub it through the sieve with this gizmo here so it pushes it right through the mesh I have to tell you I put my potato through one of these drum sips absolutely its usual to use one of these no I want one No 'we took me two years to find buddy right that's great would you like to pour that some of that into there yes that's great and I'll start pushing that through I'll tell you what let's change over that you have a go at this I'd love to and I will try and get this into shape and these jobs really were great for to kitchen man yes have a little natter while they did it discuss the local gossip no gossiping during the next stage of our fashionable 1830s dish my reputation for wielding a full eating knife has earned me the task of dealing with a pheasant yes you are good with a knife it's like to take off the leg I'm just going to remove the wishbone because that allowed me to get the whole breast off if they're just very interested to see how the modern technique is actually identical to the way in which a Victorian really offered an absolutely young this is very specialized we even have to trim them in a particular way it's good as an angle yeah that's perfect no these are the bits that leftover I'll probably choose them for something else a little bit later on they won't get wasted so well the shot Rose perches way the pheasant is fried off ready for the next stage of our dish since becoming hurt at the throne at the tender age of 11 the princess was kept under 24-hour surveillance by her mother the Duchess of Kent such was her paranoia that something untoward might happen to her the sleeping arrangements while at Shugborough backed this up Victoria slept in this bedroom with her mother most likely in the same bed just like she did back at Kensington Palace on the second day of Victoria's visit to Shugborough the party went from Litchfield the home tillage field the place where more of the people could see their future Queen Victoria records in her dairy at 10:00 we set out for Litchfield the whole party going children and all Lord and Lady Litchfield went in her open carriage we proceeded to the Cathedral which is quite beautiful the figures worked in stone on the outside and the three beautiful spars are worthy of great admiration we went into the interior of the cathedral into a pew and the choristers sang an anthem back at the house the poor maids had no time for sightseeing with a royal party in residence they would have been even more work to do than usual at the laundry the work was back-breaking the maids would fill a laundry copper which heated the water this meant carrying hundreds of back-breaking buckets in from the yard shut breh house still boasts of 19th century laundry and it's now used to demonstrate how the work was done back then so how much extra work would they have been because of the royal visit oh I've been double or triple would have needed extra help coming in from the village because of all the bed linen and then extra tablecloths they'd need napkins make an awful lot of washing what sort of hours did they work they work 12-hour days starting at 5:00 a.m. in the morning working six and a half days a week only half a day on Sunday to go to church and one day off for months that is not much is it not a lot so was there a weekly routine here for the maids the main washing would be through from Monday till Tuesday and then from Wednesday to Friday it would be the ironing the folding and the airing then Saturdays they were sorting all the dirty washing and then start all over again the 12-hour day was pretty demanding for the servants and the work would it be more daunting hog were not invested in some of the latest gizmos and gadgets to help ease the laundry maids pain when Victoria was here this was the latest piece of equipment it's called a dolly peg and it's just twist and turn like this hundreds and fours we say a hundred turns for each load of washing hundred turn hundred turns but the dolly peg was luxury on legs compared to the old washboard as I'm about to find out you need to rub the cloth down on the wooden slats using your knuckles knuckles that you're making excellent just as I've masked a Victorian washing they're still the ironing to do and believe it or not this is what they would have used for all the extra laundry what is this contraption it looks like something out of a torture chamber I know it does it's called a box mangle and it's an ironing machine we use it to iron all the large flat items like sheets and tablecloths that would take a very long time with it with a hot iron the many tablecloths required for Victoria's visit would have been wound around these two rollers which were placed under the weight of box the other way so how many people would have manned this ideally you need three people the handyman to operate the machine and two main putting the cloth on and off the rollers I think you can stop now it isn't right oh thank goodness for modern ions when Victoria visited Shugborough was practically a self-sufficient estate it had a farm and a flour mill and it had something else something appreciated by the toffs and the servants alike it's very own brew house built in 1780 and restored to full working glory in the 1990s space this is the original Brutus NIC Burton and Keith bot are in charge today at the time of Victoria's visit the Brewers produced up to 40,000 gallons of beer a year three hundred and twenty thousand pints a year who's drinking all this bit well the servants during the time of Victoria's visit have about eight pints a day although some have won over the eight is that way the expression cannot control but this isn't strong stuff is it no it's called small beer it's only about one or two percent proof this sort of combination unit alcopop and an energy drink of the day there was another good reason to drink beer during the time of Victoria's visit cholera was spreading across Britain killing thousands and thus the fermented and purified Betty was the safer option than water so did his lordship also go for the safer option and down a pint with his supper was it normal for Harris socratic families to consume beer like this or was it something peculiar to shag Brett oh absolutely in lots of houses but the water wasn't good for them you necessarily you didn't so yes people did out there his lordship can of course afford wine and has wine with the meals but he also has a general drink and for his parties and his hunting parties yes he has beer yeah what do we know about beer consumption during Victoria's visit well we know from the records that around 450 gallons of beer was consumed over a three-day visit but of course if you start to remember that there was a hundred nine members of staff at Schober at that time who were all having a gallon a day then the actual amount consumed by the visitors was somewhat less but still around 150 gallons of beer 150 gallons I mean they're running here for a few days that's 1200 points they certainly enjoyed their beer then funny to picture the Duchess of Kent downing a pint but if she did it would have been a lighter lady spear because it was brewed in different strengths the strongest for the lords less strong for the ladies Cheers and they still brew it today what's a fair drop that isn't it it's not bad at all back in the kitchen our pheasant has been fried and it's time to see if our chakras which has been poaching for 40 minutes has worked the big moment is arrived because we've actually got to Diamond this monster here now the way we're going to do that is with a great deal of care then I do a Tommy Cooper job and then we pray okay because this is very very difficult easy does it [Music] I just look at that [Music] and it's the butter in the mold that enables us to get that off that is beautiful Dean coming off it no it's named after the coffee fusion monks whose monasteries are known as charter houses in France and chakras and they were meant to be vegetarians but they often weren't and usually a short throws is a shell a beautiful mosaic of vegetables on the outside but often hidden inside pigeons and sausages and things and it's a satire really on the fact that these monks broke their vegetarian vows because the meats all hidden inside time to delve into our chest up puree you just taste that now it should be delicious it's nicely seasoned cooked in the pheasant stock absolutely delicious yeah I'm now going to fill the center yes and I'm gonna very carefully build it up into the shape of the turban oh it was a very very common and popular form of presenting an entree lovely though this recipe is to our modern eyes I think it looks rather peculiar but much like today the fruit reflects society the Victorians were after all engineers and builders and their food was heavily engineered - there's just one thing left to do before we serve it Lord wanna come upstairs thanks Victoria's host Lord Litchfield was a very jolly fellow by all accounts but he was also described by contemporaries as an extravagant and imprudent man a bit of a waste of them posting the princess and her mother cost a fair bit but a gambling habit cost him far more in fact ten years after Victoria's visit it cost him almost the entire estate and he created his very own gaming room for his addiction well I bet a very young Victoria saw this building but I bet nobody told her what went on in here this is shakras tower of the winds this proved old tower was the Earl's personal gambling den and he lost a large proportion of his fortune upstairs most of the gambling that went on here was cards but it would have been the gee-gees that did the O in that and general over expenditure and speculation [Applause] but in 1841 the Earl's lawyer who was a bit of a bookie on the quiet brought an action against him for 20,000 pounds of stupendous amount of money for the recovery of racing and gambling debts to pay off his debts Litchfield had to sell the contents of Shugborough he hung on to the family silver and some portraits but everything else had to go he made almost a million pounds in today's money but the shame of it all sent him abroad so just ten years after Victoria's visit the place was mothballed and became silent a small part of it was occupied by a gardener and his family and the Earl headed off in his coach for a quieter and more economical life in France on the last night of her visit the princess and the Duchess enjoyed a dinner and then a ball where the young victoria dressed in pink satin danced under the watchful gaze of her mother she ragin hidari at 7:00 we dined and after dinner we danced I danced three quadrille first with Lord Anson then with Lord Padgett and then with Lord Russell and weird to be served our fabulous pheasant dish as she would have been in the very same dining room we're gonna be served gentlemen what's a Turner I fancy we've got the butter in the under butler We certainly have today lovely and what are they bringing us rosemary this is fill it offensive eyelash at Rose I tell you what really grabs me first off what does is the way these little baby vegetables have been so artistically arranged marvelous isn't it you have to have the patience of a saint you need the patience of a saint and the income of the Lord you certainly do a lot of chat about this Rose man I'd like to try bit by curd as he's gonna be interesting because there's definitely a process here but it takes it gives it to the under-butler I'm learning something here yep then a butler does the actual portion control and his lordship gets his two slabs let's look Tony good I have to say airings in season all that the chestnut isn't in the juices I say they didn't live well you know as it's a incredibly romantic in his diet and what with a candle lit and everything I've got a new treasure for you to have a look at what is this haha it's a little brooch for the youngest of the Litchfield children but we've seen earlier in a portrait so she'd have been about four and Victoria was thirteen and they played together and when she left Victoria presented Harriet with the emerald and diamond brooch how lovely is that now I've had quite a be read I've been off to the brewhouse that's why we've got this this is his Lordships own which is the strong ale produced out of the Shugborough brewery right you've got a bit of m'ladies fancy there which is not quite so strong oh well let's do a swap what let's do I'll have the strong one how does it simmer Lord's and Milady's and just see how this goes down the hatch see it's quite floral isn't it it's very strong that's the strong one isn't it now there's another beer connection in this room because if you look up at that stucco on the ceiling that 3d effect in the 18th century was supposed to have come about partly because they used beer in the plaster mix so that it stuck better not necessarily hug Brooke [Music] Victoria and her mother left early the next morning as her progress around the country continued this punishing schedule took its toll on the young princess but her mother was determined to keep her profile as high as possible [Music] join us next time on Royal Upstairs Downstairs at Harvard house where 3 years later she was still on the road being paraded around the country to meet the great and the good [Music]

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 277,509

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, royal upstairs downstairs, shugborough house, queen victoria, royal kitchen, royal kitchens, royal cooking

Id: 1QGNRKo1ZGo

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020