Читать книгу Dinner at Buckingham Palace - Secrets & recipes from the reign of Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth II - Charles Oliver - Страница 9

Royal eating habits during the reigns of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII followed a similarly lavish approach to those of their predecessors.

At least five different courses were served for the royal breakfast. Bacon and eggs, bloaters [herring], chickens, chops, cutlets, sausages, steaks and woodcock, were just some of the dishes on offer. The bacon, invariably streaky, was cut in rashers a quarter of an inch thick, and eggs would be served at a moment’s notice in a variety of ways, including boiled, fried, coddled, en cocotte, scrambled or as an omelette.

Despite such huge breakfasts, the royal household was apparently hungry again by lunchtime, when meals of eight or ten courses were the order of the day. And by dinner-time they were ready for more – again to the tune of eight or ten courses!

The royal supper was undoubtedly the most elaborate meal of the day. It was customary to serve both thick and clear soups, as well as fish either plainly cooked or prepared according to elaborate recipes requiring complicated sauces and flamboyant dressing. There would also be two entrées, two varieties of roast meat, chicken or quail, game, sweetbreads, two desserts, two savouries and at least two kinds of water ices to prepare overburdened royal stomachs for the next course. Notably there is no reference to hors d’oeuvres, which most likely originated in Russia, where people ate highly flavoured titbits called zakuski with a drink of vodka before settling down to dinner. English restaurants adopted the custom at the end of the nineteenth century because it kept the guests happy while dinner was being prepared, and English private houses duly followed suit.

The great gas and charcoal stoves and spits would daily cook something like 300 pounds of meat, 30 or more chickens, and numerous pheasants, partridges and quails. If necessary, a whole bullock, weighing about 150 lb, could be cooked on a giant spit, with a small army of chefs and kitchen assistants on hand to keep it continually basted. Another outsized dish was a type of raised pie with as filling a good plump turkey stuffed with an equally plump chicken, itself stuffed with an ample pheasant that had been stuffed with a healthy-sized woodcock. The whole lot was then placed in an enormous pie dish, roofed over with pastry, and baked until it was fit for a queen. This was a particular favourite of the German emperor Wilhelm I, when he visited Queen Victoria (whose eldest daughter married his son).

And just in case anybody ever felt hungry after consuming one of the huge luncheons or dinners, there were always side tables set out with cold chickens, tongues, rounds of beef, partridges and pheasants in season, and salads.