Country Pursuits Royal Recipes

The Royal Family are steeped in tradition,

and throughout history the royal tables have

showcased culinary excellence.

'In celebration of royal food...'

We know it's the Queen's recipe

because we've got it in her own hand.

'..from the present and past...'

That is proper regal.

'We recreate old family favourites.'

Now, the Queen Mother had this really wicked trick with these.

What a mess.

'We sample royal eating alfresco...'

-Wow.

-That is what you want.

'..and revisit the most extravagant times.'

Pheasant, stag, turkey, salmon,

oysters and turbot dressed in a lobster champagne sauce.

Unbelievable.

This is Royal Recipes.

Hello. I'm Michael Buerk, and welcome to Royal Recipes.

This is Audley End,

magnificent stately home built in the style of a royal palace,

and a former home of King Charles II.

In the splendour 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 maid's 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 Nicholls,

who worked at Buckingham Palace

in the early 1900s.

And for the first time in over 100 years,

we'll be bringing these recipes back to life.

This time we cook food that reflects the royal family's love

of the countryside.

From their hunting, shooting and fishing pursuits,

to their enjoyment of rich, rural flavours.

Right, so...

'Today in the Royal Recipes kitchen,

'chef Anna Haugh tries sausage making,

'using the Queen's favourite meat, pheasant.'

You might be lucky to get a cocktail sausage.

It's quite a process, and quite an art, I think.

Lord Iveagh shows Dr Matt Green the rich history of a shooting estate,

created by a maharaja and adored by royalty.

-So George there.

-That's right. King George.

-And the Queen.

-Wow.

And we follow Prince Charles's example

and go foraging for mushrooms.

That's worth picking.

In the kitchen wing of this glorious stately home,

we start our celebration of the royals' country pursuits

with a recipe from the early days of the Queen's reign,

and a firm favourite with the Queen mother.

Hello and welcome to the grand kitchen.

With me, Anna Haugh, top chef at a London restaurant...

WHISPERED: ..where the young royals go.

Yes, they do from time to time.

Down the ages, most of our kings and queens have been country lovers,

and when it comes to eating, they are really fond of game.

What are you going to do for us today?

Well, I don't blame them. I love game myself.

And today I'm actually going to make a royal recipe.

This is a recipe from the Queen Mother's cook,

and it's galantine of game.

-Galantine?

-Galantine.

So galantine usually would be like a kind of sausage-shaped, kind of, um,

type of terrine.

-Cylindrical rather than square.

-Yes.

But today I'm going to keep with the traditional terrine mould,

just because it's easier to kind of shape it.

So I've lightly cooked off pheasant and partridge breasts here and then

the legs I've just kind of pulsed in a blender while they were raw.

And I'm going to mix it with a little bit of sausage meat

-and then pack it in nice and tightly.

-Wow.

So, first of all, I'm just going to give these a bit of a slice.

You want to kind of cut them about a centimetre thick.

-Yeah.

-So that we can nicely line it up on top.

OK, so I'm going to mix the two meats here together.

-Mm-hm.

-It's pretty simple.

But you just want to make sure that it's completely combined.

Tell me, why the sausage meat?

The sausage meat is a good kind of filler

and the flavour of the pork meat

is very nice. Then we're going to wrap it in bacon

as well so, it kind of all gels in very nicely together.

So just give it a good mix so that it's

nice and evenly kind of distributed.

In the olden days, would they have wrapped it in bacon like that?

They may not have, no, actually.

They probably would have just

had this in a cylindrical mould so it looks

like a large sausage.

And then they would have sliced it and set it in gelatine, or aspic,

or possibly set the entire one in aspic as well.

There's a little bit more in there.

OK.

And then...

Oh, you're sticking in a layer of the breast in at that stage?

-Yeah.

-The royals would have had

-lots of pheasants to play with, wouldn't they?

-Mm-hm.

They were so fond of hunting and shooting

-and fishing and everything.

-Yeah, yeah.

You don't really have to be a royal, do you?

I mean, the pheasants and partridges and things are, in the season,

are pretty widely available.

Absolutely, yeah. I would completely agree.

-It's a kind of "vegetarians, look away now".

-Yes!

So, I'm going to pack this in lovely and tightly.

Oh, look, you've left a bit of pheasant.

Yes, just for you.

-A little snack.

-Mm.

-Keep those energy levels up.

-OK.

-Mm-hm.

I'm going to fold this over...

..like this.

And then a few more slices

just to make sure that there's no bits of mince peeping out.

Are you sure it's going to stay sealed?

Yes. Yeah, no, it will, it will all kind of cook together.

I think I should be able to fold them over now.

Yeah.

It does look very neat, doesn't it?

Yeah. And wait till you see it when I turn it out.

It's super neat.

So all I'm going to do now is wrap it in some tinfoil...

..give it a good kind of

squeeze all around.

And then I'm just going to cook it in a tray of hot water and this just

helps with the kind of even cooking...

-Right.

-..of the terrine.

So you need to cook this for about

an hour and a half at about 160 degrees.

-Mm-hm.

-I'm just going to give my hands a quick wash because I've

been handling raw meat and I'm just about to reveal how our terrine is

is going to look, our galantine's going to look.

A-ha. Oh, I love this bit.

-Yes.

-Can I do the reveal?

-Yes, please.

-One, two, three.

-SHE GASPS

-Ho-ho!

-Isn't it beautiful?

-It's lovely, isn't it?

Turn it round a bit there. Shall I put the plate there?

Yes.

Oh!

Oh, look at that.

Yeah. Wouldn't that be lovely,

just sitting around a table with your friends, a cheeky glass of red.

One or two. Now, how do we eat this?

-Do we have it on toast?

-On toast, maybe,

with a little bit of fig chutney could be quite nice.

-Fig chutney?

-Yes.

-Ooh-hoo!

Yeah, I think something with a little bit of kind of sweetness,

acidity and a bit of spice...

-Yeah.

-..goes so well with game.

-Have a knife and fork.

-Thank you.

Right.

It looks fantastic. I'm going to go from this end.

-Mm.

-Mm-mm-mm.

Oh, yes, it's quite solid.

-Yeah.

-Here we go.

-Mm.

-Mm.

I'll have a bit of toast with it.

The chutney goes so well with that.

It does. You kind of need a bit of the chutney with it.

Mm.

But although it is game, it's not overpowering game.

-No.

-I don't think it is the scariest game in the world

-to make a galantine with.

-It certainly isn't.

Oh! The Queen Mum's cook knew what she was doing.

A delicious and simple way for

the royals to enjoy the game shot for their table.

Shooting parties have always been part of royal life.

Many a grand shooting estate

was created specifically to attract their patronage.

Elveden in Suffolk is one such estate.

It's current owner is the fourth Earl of Iveagh, Edward Guinness.

-Good morning.

-Good morning.

He's agreed to share its past with historian Dr Matt Green.

-This is fantastic.

-This is our van.

This van has been with us since 1934.

Since 1934?

It's what the shooting guns have always been driven around in.

A suitably vintage start to the day.

The Guinness family have owned the 17,000-acre estate since 1894,

but Elveden was a firm favourite of the royals even before then.

It was Queen Victoria's close friend,

the Punjabi Maharajah Duleep Singh,

who bought it some 30 years earlier and set

about building its hunting reputation.

With Duleep Singh, Elveden became

one of the finest shoots in the country.

Apparently, one day, he killed...

..760 game birds with 1,000 shots.

With 1,000 shots?

That's almost a 100% success rate.

He was considered extremely good, one of the top ten shots of his day.

Are you that good?

Forever if it wasn't a challenge it wouldn't be fun.

-The game birds are safe with me.

-OK!

Elveden was the perfect place for the Maharajah

to entertain his neighbour, the Prince of Wales,

who owned the 7,000-acre Sandringham estate

just across the county border in Norfolk.

And it was a whole social occasion.

They had some delicious food and drink,

and Duleep Singh got so large,

he needed to be seated while shooting on a wicker chair...

-Really? Right.

-..which rotated so he could face the game birds from

whichever direction they came from.

So, he could swivel round and then have a shot?

He was a sitting gun.

Edward VII, George V and George VI all shot here at Elveden.

No shooting party was complete without lunch.

-So...

-So, where are we?

-Over this way.

-Yes.

-This wood here is the Duke of York Wood.

Shoots would stop off and enjoy their lunch.

And they would have the most amazing array of food,

which was all laid out in a marquee.

Over here? In a marquee?

-Yes.

-Really?

It's amazing to kind of picture that, isn't it?

The Prince of Wales himself

would have been out there after a successful morning,

and almost by magic this marquee would appear and they'd be in

there having this lavish banquet, exchanging excitable tales,

quaffing down fine wines, and then going back out there.

It must have been amazing.

If only the trees could talk.

All the stories and the wonderful tales that were told.

There's plenty to tell from Lord Iveagh's family archive.

It includes detailed records

of those lunches and the illustrious guests.

-Come in, Matt.

-Thank you.

This is my great-great-grandmother's book.

It's a photograph album that she took with her

and many of her guests signed.

And she put in some beautiful photographs...

Oh, wow! These are really old.

So, this is essentially a collection of photographs of the shoots.

What about this picture here? Talking of lunch,

are these the kind of pop-up dining halls

they used to have their meals in

-in the middle of the shoot?

-They were.

They were dining at the Duke of York Wood.

-Wow!

-So, the trees have grown but the place is the same.

What are these signatures?

So, they're all the host guests.

OK. And George there.

That's right. King George.

-That was the king.

-And, um, the Queen.

-Churchill.

-Here we go.

-Churchill.

And there's even a picture of Edward VII himself.

It's amazing to see these.

A really vivid trip down memory lane.

-That's right.

-Thank you for showing it to us.

Not at all. My great pleasure.

Shooting parties are still a part of life today on some royal estates.

Apparently, Anna, pheasants are the Queen's very favourite game bird.

It's probably a good job because they shoot an awful lot of them.

Especially over Christmas.

Boxing Day is apparently the big shooting day.

Prince Philip used to, I think his doctors advised him not to,

used to be shooting these birds.

And the Queen was involved in picking them up, apparently,

-or at least collecting them.

-Just imagine the two of them there,

as a couple, out kind of doing such a traditional British hobby.

And Prince Philip likes cooking, I think.

Yeah, I heard he did like to cook.

And also when they would shoot the pheasant, any of the leftovers,

he would bring to the local butcher

and they would make pheasant sausages.

He didn't want to see anything wasted.

-Exactly.

-Are you going to do those pheasant sausages?

I'm going to make pheasant sausages but I've never made them before.

So, I'm following this old pheasant recipe for sausages,

-and I'm going to give it a go.

-OK.

So, fingers crossed that I make edible sausages.

-So, what have you got?

-The first thing I'm going to do is I have some

sausage meat, some chopped up streaky bacon, and minced pheasant.

Because pheasant isn't the obvious thing to have in a sausage,

-is it?

-No.

-There's very little fat on it.

Very little fat. But I think there's a good flavour to lend very well.

If you match it up with the kind of fattiness of your sausage meat

and your bacon, I think it's going to go really well.

And then I'm just going to put a little hint of spice

in there as well to give it a bit more interest.

So, let's get going.

-So, I'm going to stick them all in.

-It's a smoky bacon?

Yes. Yeah, just to give it a little extra bit of flavour.

You're going to mix them all together?

Mix them all together, actually,

and I'll just pop the spice in there now.

What spices are they?

A pinch of nutmeg.

-Mm hm.

-And then another pinch of allspice.

And I'm just mixing it in here with the sausage meat, the chopped bacon,

and then the minced pheasant.

-Mm hm.

-And just give it a good mix.

And then I'm going to use a kind of sausage attachment on...

Sausage attachment!

On a home mixer.

I'm quite interested to see how this is going to go.

I'm quite nervous. I'm quite nervous.

-Shall I hold it?

-Yes.

Make sure it doesn't move.

So, the recipe says, I need to spoon it in there.

-Mm hm.

-Put a little bit extra on the side.

Switch this little bad boy on.

WHIRRING

And let's...

get sausage making.

Ooh!

And you've got the sausage skins already on the end there.

Do you want me to do that? Shall I press that down?

Yeah. If you keep spooning.

I will.

I don't know how hungry you are, Michael,

but you might be looking to get a cocktail sausage.

It's quite a process, quite an art, I think.

Yeah.

Oh, yes.

Now, that's a proper looking sausage.

It's not as easy as it looks, this, you know.

I mean, we could keep going all day with this.

We could, we could. Shall I put a bit more in?

-No, definitely not.

-That's it?

-Let's nip this in the bud. Switch it off.

Yeah.

Phew! Ooh!

-OK.

-And a little tie.

That's quite good. With your help there, Michael, I was able to...

I think that was the crucial element, actually.

Yes, absolutely.

Now... Now I've got to twist them into sausages.

OK. So, I think we should get three out of here.

-Yeah.

-If I do that like that.

And then just give them a twist.

Give them a twist.

Twist.

OK. Pheasant sausages. Three pheasant sausages there.

I'm quite proud of that.

-They do look good actually, don't they?

-Yeah.

So, the next step is to fry your sausages in a pan.

Little bit of butter, a little bit of garlic and thyme.

-Mm hm.

-Goes delicious with some mashed potato.

Mashed potato, of course.

Of course. Bangers and mash.

But this is a cider gravy.

So, you've got chicken stock, very little bit of flour,

caramelised onion in here.

And a little secret to this is a spoonful of English mustard.

-Yeah?

-So, you've got the sharpness of the cider and you've also got

the hint of mustard, just to take off the fattiness of the sausage.

And then maybe just a little pinch of brown sugar in there as well,

just to give it a bit of sweetness.

Just give that a nice little stir.

They probably needed recipes for leftovers because, you know,

so many pheasants get shot on these occasions.

King Edward was so keen on shooting that he had the clocks

advanced by half an hour at Sandringham,

so he could spend more of the day shooting.

What do you think of that? They used to call it Sandringham time.

-That's brilliant.

-Yeah. Oh, I love your mash!

Creamy. What's the secret with that?

Being Irish, I think.

-What, you're good with potatoes.

-Yes.

-Oh, yes, yes. yes.

-OK.

Now that...is what I call a sausage.

And you put them on top... That's your cheffy bit, isn't it?

That's my cheffy bit. Yes.

Well, you know... My pizzazz!

-OK.

-Yep.

-Now our lovely gravy.

It's very traditional.

Would you serve it with any other vegetables?

No. No.

I think just like this is exactly what you want.

On a cold winter's day.

Exactly. So there you have it.

Pheasant sausage, cider gravy and creamy mash.

Yes, please. Bring it on.

Knife and fork for you, knife and fork for me.

Go on. You made 'em.

Oh, yes. They're chunky, aren't they?

Here we go.

Mmm.

-Mm.

-I've never had pheasant sausage before.

-Mm.

-And I certainly will have it again.

-It's delicious.

-Absolutely delicious.

These posh sausages would be a favourite

with all ages after an afternoon in the countryside.

For the Royal Family,

rural pursuits mean different things to different people.

Prince Charles is passionate about natural food,

and he's not averse to foraging for his supper.

When it comes to mushrooms, John Wright is an expert,

a self-taught mycologist,

and like Prince Charles, he's very happy to forage.

I'm been mushrooming a very long time now, 1965, I think I started.

I get just as excited now as I did when I first started.

I can't wait to see what we're going to find today.

Mushroom foraging can be traced back to the Roman times,

but it is not until recently that it's become such a popular pastime.

People absolutely love it,

and it sort of calms the nerves and slows the heart rate.

I remember seeing a picture of Prince Charles

in the paper carrying a mushroom basket

and I thought, "That's great",

because he's got people that can go and pick mushrooms for him,

but he wanted to do it himself

and that's the whole point of it,

you've go and actually do it yourself,

it's engaging with nature, really.

And with over 15,000 species of mushrooms in the UK,

there's plenty to choose from.

And the royal estates lend themselves

particularly well to foraging.

I think Prince Charles is quite a lucky mushroom hunter

because he's got access to this wonderful parkland

over most of the royal estate,

so he can just go wandering and he'll find grassland species

and woodland species, kind of in his own back garden.

Not everybody can do that.

Foraging for mushrooms takes great skill and knowledge

and should only be undertaken by experts such as John,

who often forages on his friends' land.

Grasslands like this are a great source of mushrooms,

as they have often been left uncultivated for hundreds of years,

creating an undisturbed environment for the fungi.

This is lovely. One of my favourites.

It's a really common mushroom.

And that's quite a nice size, you often get them in quite large rings.

It's called the Scarlet Wax Cap, it's quite a good one for

frightening your friends that come round for dinner.

People really worry about red things and I can understand why.

But no, there's some edible red things

and there's some poisonous red things,

you just have to know what it is.

These are nice. Look.

Quite amazing.

These are puffballs. This is quite tasty,

and you can see how tasty it is

because somebody has eaten a bit of it already.

There's been a slug in there.

There's a little bit left.

Try and get away from the slug-nibbled area.

Bit like a mushroom flavoured marshmallow.

That is worth picking. In the basket.

Now, look at this.

Wow.

John finds a ring of parasol mushrooms,

the final ingredients needed for a well-known royal favourite dish.

Now he just needs to find a spot to cook.

We have heat. My goodness, I think I'll just

sit here and warm my hands.

In honour of the very fine mushrooms I've managed to pick today I'm going

to use the Duke of Edinburgh's own recipe for wild mushrooms

which is mushrooms a la creme.

So let's get that melted.

What I think I'll do is I'll put some of our wax caps in first,

they take a little bit longer to cook, they're quite moist.

Remove the twigs, I don't worry too much about that.

That's a little scarlet wax cap.

Just get the stem off.

And now our magnificent puffball, I'll break him in bits.

Pop him in. What else have we got?

Here are my parasols next, these cook very quickly.

Just going to pull the stem out, you can't do anything with the stem,

and don't need to clean it, don't need to wash it,

just break it into little triangles and in it goes.

Mushrooms really do need salt, there's a very bland flavour,

they need that little bit of salt.

I'm going to put in a little bit of pepper.

These mushrooms are cooked. I'm going to put this in.

And I think that's enough.

I do like the cream thick but not too thick,

you don't want it to be like a sticky custard or something,

you just need it a little bit runny.

That's it, done. Just try it now.

Let's have a go. It should be perfect.

And the cream will have taken on the flavour of the mushrooms.

My God, that's amazing.

That is really, really brilliant.

I'll have some of the mushrooms.

I'm going to go with the puffball.

It's sort of ice cream, it really is.

It's just wonderful, but it's so much better out of doors.

It really is the perfect end to a foraging day -

pick something in the wild, we eat it.

When our kitchen maid, Mildred Nicholls,

who's left us this fantastic recipe book,

was working in the Buckingham Palace kitchens,

Edward VII was on the throne, then his son, George V.

Both dedicated countrymen, out and about all the time,

shooting, fishing, in Edward's case, philandering!

So what have you managed to find in Mildred's cookbook that is

a nice snack to take out on your country pursuits?

Something to put in the hamper, something to have in your hand,

-a nice sweet snack?

-OK, well, this recipe is very interesting.

It's called chapeaux communs, and it's like...

-Chapeaux communs?

-Yeah.

I've never seen anything like it before,

so I'm quite excited to see how it's going to turn out.

It's a kind of pastry that is wrapped around marzipan,

and then we're going to dip it in chocolate -

that originally wasn't in the recipe but I think it will be a nice

kind of twist on it - but I think what makes this recipe

so interesting is that the pastry is like a mixture between

kind of like a pastry and a bit of a cake, because you've got a bit

of baking powder in here, and a bit of cream...

-That's unusual.

-..butter, flour...

Yeah, it is, it's quite interesting.

So you just mix all those ingredients together and you roll it

out to about half a centimetre thick.

-And that's what we have here.

-"Chapeau" is French for hat,

-isn't it?

-That's right, yes.

And you shape it into a particular kind of hat,

-but we'll talk about that in a minute.

-Exactly. Exactly.

So, what do you do?

I'm just going to cut the rounds out now, and then I'm going to

-make the marzipan.

-I love marzipan.

Yeah, yeah. And I think the royals were fans of marzipan.

Oh, down the ages.

I think it would have been seen as a real treat because there was

a lot that you could do with marzipan -

you could colour it and shape it,

and I think back in the Tudors' time,

they used to like it shaped as little animals.

And they'd have them on the banqueting table.

-Yeah.

-And things like that.

-Biting their heads off.

Mind you, it must have been only for the very, very rich in those days.

Oh, yeah. Definitely.

So this is your almond flour, and it's the base of the marzipan.

It is just ground down almonds.

And I'm going to add the sugar.

And then we're going to add our butter to it.

And then the same way you would make like apple crumble,

you'd just kind of try to lift the butter, mix the butter,

through your almond flour as quickly as possible,

and this way you get kind of like an even covering of butter

on your almond so then, when you add your egg,

it just kind of all mixes together like a good dough.

The Queen loves marzipan, apparently,

and other people know that.

I think that when she went to Germany once,

they actually gave her a big marzipan

rendering of the Brandenburg gate.

-Can you imagine?

-Brilliant! You can just imagine her

-sinking her teeth into that.

-Yes!

-What next?

-So, all you need to do is crack one egg into the centre.

Keep a sharp eye out for any egg shell, looking good to go.

Just give it a mix.

OK, so it looks like it's almost together now,

so I'm going to get my hand back in there, a bit more pressure on it.

OK, so when you're rolling marzipan,

you don't use flour because this is a flourless recipe,

we're going to use icing sugar to help you roll it out,

so we're going to roll this into small little balls,

just going to take a little bit of icing sugar, there.

It's the fact that it's in tiny little pieces,

tiny little hats, that make it so suitable, don't they,

for putting in a hamper, almost putting it in your pocket if you're

-going out shooting or something?

-Exactly. Exactly.

-Oh, now, now, and

this is the tricky bit. Yes, yes, you roll the ball.

-Yeah.

-Very neat. Very round.

So, now I'm going to start shaping the little hats.

We're looking for a three-point hat.

Oh, it would be called in those days a tricorn hat, or something.

-A tricorn hat.

-Don't know why they went out of fashion.

They look rather elegant, I think.

Oh, they look rather sweet, don't they?

Don't they look quite pretty, yeah? They do look quite pretty.

So, I'm just going to pop these on the tray, now,

and I'm going to eggwash them.

It gives them a nice kind of glaze and shine,

and then I'm going to bake them in the oven for about

10 to 12 minutes, at 180 degrees, and then when they come out,

just to give it an extra kick, a little bit more sweetness,

I'm going to glaze them with a sugar syrup,

which is just water and sugar boiled together.

It's going to be a really kind of sweet little mouthful, isn't it?

Yeah. A nice, crunchy, soft kind of biscuit.

So I've actually baked some earlier on,

which I'm going to bring over now.

-Look at these.

-They do look lovely, don't they?

But they've lost some of the hat shape.

Yeah, well, it's a different hat shape.

-But, yeah, I can kind of see...

-A kind of squashed hat!

-Yeah.

So these ones I did glaze with sugar syrup on top, and you can see

how shiny and delicious they look,

I'm going to now dip them in the chocolate.

Now, Mildred wouldn't have done this.

-No, she wouldn't have done this.

-This is your twist.

This is my twist.

This does look good.

When you put that chocolate on there, isn't that going to leave the grid?

You put it on the grid there, will that leave a grid pattern?

You can't see it, and what it does is that if there is a little bit of

excess chocolate, if I have been a bit sloppy in my dipping...

-Oh, surely not!

-..it means that it will drip off.

It does look good, doesn't it?

So it's really important that when you melt your chocolate,

you do it over a bain marie cos chocolate's quite sensitive.

You use those bain maries quite often, don't you?

I do, honestly, I don't know what I'd do without a bain marie.

I think these are the two prettiest ones, or them, so go for the...

Go for the Quasimodos.

We should wait, shouldn't we, for the chocolate to set?

But I don't think I can.

-OK.

-Can I try it?

-Go on.

I really hope you like this! Oh, my goodness, that looks delicious!

Can I do it in one? No!

Mmm!

Now, I'm not a marzipan fan,

so I don't know how I'm going to feel about this, but I do think

the chocolate is going to help.

It's a chunky little mouthful of sweetness, isn't it?

I think Mildred's onto a winner, here.

I think...

hats off to Mildred!

That's it for our programme on food for royal country pursuits.

See you next time.

Mmm!