Birthdays 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 the past...

That is proper regal.

..we recreate old family favourites...

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.

"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, one of Britain's finest stately homes,

built in the style of a royal palace and once owned by a king.

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.

For the first time in over 100 years,

we'll be bringing these recipes back to life.

This time, we are cooking food fit for only the very best of parties -

royal birthdays.

For generations, they've celebrated in style.

Today on Royal Recipes,

former royal chef Carolyn Robb on cooking for Prince Charles's 50th.

That was a party arranged for him by William and Harry.

They took charge of everything, including the menu.

Historian Dr Annie Gray reveals how the Edwardian elite

celebrated a king's birthday.

You hold it at the most fashionable hotel in town,

and you serve the birthday cake on the back of a small elephant.

And chef Anna Haugh makes a birthday pudding fit for Queen Victoria's grandson.

-Candles?

-No! No, candles would ruin it.

Anyway, there's a lot of rum in there, it might flambe up.

Here in the grand stately home,

we begin with a dish fit for royal dining -

one to impress the finest of royal palates.

We're here in the grand kitchen with top London chef Anna Haugh.

Today we are going to talk about birthdays, royal birthday food.

The dish you are doing is from

the present Queen's 80th birthday lunch party,

which was held at Kew Palace. What are you cooking?

Today I'm going to do a venison haunch with a juniper sauce.

The first thing I'm going to do is prepare the venison,

to get it into the pan.

Make sure that the plan is lovely and hot

because it is the caramelisation of your meat

that's going to give you lovely flavour.

-And you season it?

-Yeah, salt and pepper.

Once my pan is lovely and hot -

you can see there's a good bit of smoke coming off that -

add a little bit more oil

and then in goes my steak.

Oh, sizzles as soon as it hits it!

Followed by the thyme.

A bit of crushed garlic.

That was an explosion of wonderful garlic smell.

So it needs to be on a nice high heat, especially in the beginning,

to get that good colour,

needs to be a nice golden brown on each side,

and once that happens, I will add my butter in

and we can get going on our sauce.

The venison at this luncheon party was actually from the royal estate at Sandringham.

Do you think that would be farmed or wild

and is there any difference at all?

I'd like to think it was wild.

In your restaurant, you'd only cook wild venison?

Only wild, and only when it is in season.

-You've seared both sides?

-I've seared both sides.

Once I've got a bit of colour on the other side,

-I'm going to add some butter.

-Now, why?

The butter is going to allow me to have more substance to nappe,

and nappe means I'm going to spoon it on top of the steak.

And this is a more delicious way of caramelising a steak

instead of popping it in the oven.

You could pop it in the oven for probably about maybe 5-8 minutes,

and it would cook it medium rare, but I'm going to finish it off.

So nappe is a poncey chef's word for baste, is it?

Nappe is a very useful word that communicates very well to my team

-how I want something cooked.

-All right.

-But it is the same as basting, isn't it?

-Exactly, yes.

So while that's kind of cooking away,

I'm going to get going on the juniper sauce.

Juniper, which goes so well with venison.

-Nice and sharp, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Here I've already sweated down some shallots,

bit of garlic, some thyme and juniper berries.

And what I'm going to add to this now is some Madeira.

So I'm just going to add a little splash of that.

Don't hold back.

-Save some for later.

-OK.

It's interesting, isn't it, how things have changed?

I've got the menu here from the Queen's 80th birthday lunch.

I think Prince Charles organised it for her. But just three courses.

And three relatively simple courses.

Whereas her great-grandfather, Edward VII,

would have had 14 courses for lunch!

Perhaps that's why the Queen's lived as long as she has...

Well, I think you're right.

..and Edward VII didn't live to a ripe old age, did he?

Ripe, but not old.

So I'm just going to add the stock now to our sauce.

-What stock is that?

-Chicken and beef.

Giving it just a bit more meaty flavour.

So I'm going to actually take our venison off now.

How can you tell it's properly cooked?

This is one of the most difficult questions to answer,

and chefs get asked it all the time,

because when you're cooking a piece of meat from the same animal

over and over again, of course you know.

You know by touch, you know by look and that's how you know.

But really, animals are just all different, so really it's a gamble.

I'm just hoping that this is ready.

You're winging it, are you?

Now resting it is the key thing, isn't it?

Absolutely. Resting is so, so important,

because what you want to do is let it relax,

and what happens is that all the juice

and all the deliciousness just mellows out in there

and you can just really feel it when you eat it.

And if you ate that now, it would be tough.

-It would be tough.

-But leave it a bit?

Yeah, leave it a bit. It's about maybe half the cooking time,

approximately, if you've got the patience.

OK, I'm going to pass my sauce...

-You're just straining it off?

-Yes, I'm straining it off,

because I want to remove most of the juniper berries,

the garlic and the thyme.

So I'm just going to take some of the juniper berries...

I was going to say, you're not going to lose them all?

Not going to lose them all. I'm going to give it a little chop.

You get a lovely juniper flavour, and that's what we want,

that's what you associate so much with venison.

-What are you doing now?

-So I'm just going to add

just a little drop of cream, not too much.

It's a kind of a simple dish,

but you can't do without the cream, can you?

No, you need a little bit of the richness I think to make it special.

So I think we're ready to plate our venison haunch.

-It's looking really good, isn't it?

-Yup.

So that resting time is just so important.

It looks really good. Nice and pink in the centre.

Which is really what you want, isn't it, with any red meat?

That's what I want. It looks tender,

but that could just be because you've got a fantastically

sharp knife.

Yes, but for venison haunch, that is lovely and tender.

I can feel it as I'm carving. OK.

-So this is going to be quite an experience?

-Yup.

Lovely greens. And they are green. What's the secret?

You just want to cook them very quickly at a high heat, that's it.

Don't spend a long time on it.

Now our venison and our sauce, our juniper sauce.

I'm reaching for the knife and fork at this stage.

And, like a true gentleman, I'm reaching for yours, too.

-Oh, you're so good, thank you.

-Go on, you first, you cooked it.

-OK.

Oh, yes.

That does look good.

I'm going to have some of the green stuff with it, too.

Being very healthy. OK?

The juniper and the Madeira just go so well with the venison.

Mm. Mm!

Absolutely terrific.

I've never really thought too much of venison,

but I think you've changed my mind.

Well, that makes my day, Michael.

I think the Queen had fireworks in Kew Gardens after this birthday lunch.

There are fireworks in my mouth, it's absolutely lovely!

When it comes to a chocolate birthday cake,

it's said the royals always use the same recipe.

It's been a hit since chef Gabriel Tschumi first made it for

the present Queen's grandmother, Queen Mary.

It's Tschumi's chocolate cake.

Chocolate has always represented the ultimate in royal indulgence,

and, Anna, I think there's one very special chocolate cake

that is wheeled out for every royal birthday, isn't there?

That's right, Queen Mary's birthday cake.

-That's the wife of George V?

-That's right. Yes.

So for 100 years, this chocolate cake has been brought out

-at royal birthdays.

-Yeah, and today you're going to see why.

Better than that, I'm going to eat it.

-So I'm going to start off with a sabayon.

-What's a sabayon?

A sabayon is where you get a kind of simmering pan of water

and in a heatproof bowl, you're going to put your eggs and sugar in.

So it cooks very gently.

Cooks very gently, but as you can see, this is full of air,

and that's exactly what you want with a lovely sponge cake.

So once you can kind of write the figure eight,

or if you want to write Anna, you can,

-you know that it's ready.

-That's what makes a signature dish!

Exactly. So now we're going to sieve in our flour

and you sieve your flour so that it incorporates

as much air as you possibly can as well.

Only the very finest bits go down there, or just goes in slowly?

We're going to fold it in, so that we are protecting the air like that.

And we're going to do that with...

Look at the way it's... It's like a tsunami in there.

Yeah. Then our melted butter.

-Mm-hm.

-Just fold it through.

You're not kind of beating it up in any kind of way,

-you're kind of lifting it up.

-Yeah.

And then that way you are just making sure you can't see any more

of the butter and the flour.

And we're almost done,

and now I'm going to divide it between the two moulds there.

Apparently the royal cakes only ever have, "Happy Birthday," though,

it doesn't say, "Happy Birthday, William,"

or, "Happy Birthday, Harry," or something, just, "Happy Birthday."

I'm going to pour these into the two moulds now.

You want to try to make them as even as possible

because it just makes the actual cake then,

when you go to build it in layers, nice and even.

-It makes it look better.

-Yeah.

So you pop that into the oven, 160 degrees for about 20-25 minutes.

And this is what you get at the end of that?

That's exactly what you get.

The key to this cake is lots of layers of sponge

and lots of layers of chocolate.

-Because you split them all in half?

-That's right, yeah,

they are all cut perfectly in half.

And then on the outside,

we're going to finish it again with more chocolate ganache,

so it's chocolate on chocolate.

Ganache? What is a ganache?

A ganache is this delightful, luxurious, silky chocolate filling.

It's a real treat. So we melt cream and some sugar together in a pot

and then just when it comes up to the boil,

you pour it over your chocolate.

-Ooh!

-You let it rest for a minute or so.

-Yes.

-And then you just whisk it.

Why do you let it rest for a minute or so?

Why aren't you stirring away to get the chocolate melting?

Well, you'd be removing some of the heat,

and this is the only heat that you need to make your ganache.

You wouldn't think it though,

but by using a whisk, you stop incorporating air.

-And you don't want air at this stage?

-Not at this stage, no.

Look at this! Look at this!

-Oh, wow!

-Silky, shiny, gorgeous, perfect.

-Oh, lovely!

-Yes.

Now, this is a little bit hot for me to use,

-so I've got one that I made earlier on...

-OK, in the tradition.

..that I'm going to use.

And if you swap places with me, I'll start to build this.

-Only for a moment, though.

-OK, so...

I don't want to be too far away from this.

I absolutely love building cakes. Right, so,

in the centre of each kind of sponge,

you're going to put some of the chocolate ganache.

So the trick with this dish is not to hold on the chocolate, eh?

Yeah. Chocolate, just more chocolate, more chocolate.

-And then a bit more after that?

-Yeah, that's it.

It's certainly, on the outside,

you're going to completely cover it in chocolate.

So it feels like a special, celebratory kind of cake.

And what is it about building cakes that appeals to you particularly?

It's fun!

So we're almost done, three layers in.

They're quite thin layers, though.

I think the ratio of chocolate and sponge is just right, you know?

If it was too big, you wouldn't really get your chocolate kick.

-Is that the last bit?

-This is the last bit.

This is when the real fun happens.

OK, so we really need to get this on top.

Oh, now you're putting a lot more chocolate on the top

than you did in the layers.

Yeah, so, then, because I need to get it all around the sides.

So I'm going to gently nudge this over.

Oh, like, isn't this just so lovely? This is very therapeutic.

-I could do this all day.

-They have it at all their birthdays,

but the Queen had this especially, I think, on her 80th birthday,

but with a special Highgrove twist to it.

She had fruit from Highgrove actually in the cake.

Oh, I think that would have been delicious.

-Chocolate and fruit is classic.

-Yet another layer inside.

You spend a bit of time just making sure it's right.

-Finito?

-Finito.

Can I move the plate over?

You're like the best helper ever.

Oh, wow, look at that!

No, no, no. Come on, let's have a bit.

Don't you start nibbling.

I'm quite happy with that.

That looks quite delicious. Let's get it cut.

Oh, I love, I love a sponge cake.

-Yeah!

-It's so satisfying to cut.

Oh, I'm so excited to try this.

Why are you putting it away from me?

Because normally, I don't get a look-in when we go

to eat a bit of chocolate. Look at that!

Multistorey.

-Oh, look at that!

-After you, then, Anna.

Yes, it's all about me.

Anybody would have thought you'd have cooked it.

-Oh, I'm going to get the whole lot.

-Mm.

-What a great recipe.

-It is.

Lovely, the way you've got the layers.

And it's really soft and light.

Well, many happy returns!

When it comes to birthdays,

cake is a must-have and it usually follows a tasty, celebratory meal.

Royal chef Carolyn Robb produced many delicious birthday meals

while working at the royal household.

And today, she's going to make two courses

from one of her favourite celebrations.

I think the one I remember the most fondly was

Prince Charles's 50th birthday

because that was a party arranged for him by William and Harry.

They took charge of everything, including the menu.

It was a chicken dish, which was one of their favourites,

it was always a family favourite,

followed by ice cream, home-made ice cream and fruit from the garden.

What we're going to do first is make some chicken mousse.

So I've got 150g of chicken breast

and just blend it a little bit.

So that's broken down quite a bit. Now I'm going to add some basil.

I always like to add lots and lots,

just because it makes it such a gorgeous, pale green colour.

And one of the reasons for doing this dish

for Prince Charles's birthday was because he so loved herbs,

and you are able to use them in abundance in this dish.

I'm going to put a twist of pepper, add in some cream.

Right, one more stem and then I think that'll be enough.

OK. It's a really lovely, fresh, vibrant green colour.

The next stage is to make an incision into the chicken breast,

all the way from the front to the back.

This doesn't have to be perfectly neat.

If a little bit comes out while it's cooking, it really doesn't matter.

It's supposed to be a rustic dish.

Once Carolyn has stuffed the chicken,

she adds a little butter and wraps in clingfilm.

After poaching for 12 minutes,

they are then pan-fried for a further four.

So all we need to do now is plate it up.

Slice the chicken, just do it in four or five slices

so you can see the nice mousse through the middle.

Carolyn served the chicken

with some of Prince Charles's favourite vegetables -

sauteed spinach and mushrooms

accompanied by Boulangere potatoes

and finished with a cream sauce.

Although it was a private party for personal friends,

it was a really big event in many ways,

because all of Prince Charles's 17 godchildren were invited.

And together with Prince William and Prince Harry,

they put on the most incredible production,

a series of little skits and musical numbers, and it was amazing.

This is one of my favourite dishes

and I think it makes such a great birthday or celebration meal.

But no birthday celebration would be complete without a sweet treat,

and for Prince Charles's 50th, Carolyn made poached pears.

Today, I've chosen some Williams pears.

They're quite firm still,

which means they'll be absolutely perfect for poaching.

I'm now using a melon baller.

Just going to go in and scoop out.

And that's really nice, when it's being eaten,

you don't have to worry about any pips.

And I'm just going to trim the bottom, so that when it's cooked,

it stands up perfectly.

Carolyn poaches the pears in a vanilla, ginger

and orange zest syrup -

they take ten minutes to cook - before chilling in the fridge.

They are then ready to serve along with vanilla ice cream.

Now I'm going to plate it up.

And I've got a little trick

that I use to stop the ice cream from skating all over the plate.

Either put a little biscuit or a tiny little meringue

or a macaroon, or today,

I've got a few crumbs of honeycomb,

and that just stops the ice cream from skating all over the plate.

The ice cream sits on the top of that.

Ice cream was always a great favourite, particularly for birthdays.

The favourite was vanilla ice cream, just a very simple,

home-made vanilla with wonderful cream from the dairy at Windsor,

and that was always served with fruit from the garden.

And, of course, you always need a sprig of fresh mint - my favourite.

So it is a very simple dessert,

but it was always a great favourite.

With Prince Charles' favourite poached pears and chicken supreme,

it was certainly a birthday meal to remember.

Historian Dr Annie Gray is en route to a venue which hosted one of

the most lavish royal parties in Edwardian Britain.

Birthday cake, balloons, party poppers.

All of these things are part and parcel of a good birthday bash.

But they don't quite cut it when you're holding a party for a king.

The party was in honour of King Edward VII -

well-known foodie and party animal.

So what do you do when you hold a birthday bash for a king?

Well, you hold it at the most fashionable hotel in town,

and you serve it to your guests seated in a gondola,

AND you serve the birthday cake on the back of a small elephant.

That's exactly what happened here in June 1905.

London's Savoy Hotel was the setting for this extravagant event.

The King himself didn't attend,

but that didn't stop any expense being spared.

Footing the bill was American champagne millionaire George Kessler.

The hotel archivist is Susan Scott.

This is just absolutely incredible.

So in 1905, this was an open courtyard,

there was a gondola in the middle of the courtyard,

-which was full of water?

-Two gondolas.

They had one big gondola,

which was the one that had the dining table in it,

and then there was a smaller one

in which they put the band who played for the evening.

The whole space was flooded.

They used putty to seal every single doorway,

anything that looked like it might leak.

The piece de resistance, as if that were not enough,

is they brought in a baby elephant, with an enormous...

I think it had something like five tiers,

this huge birthday cake on its back.

Essentially, money was no object.

The historic Savoy has a treasure trove of an archive,

which details this extraordinary party.

This is the line-up of all the actual guests at the party.

The headlines are incredible, aren't they?

"Money-mad rich."

£125 a head is an enormous amount.

I mean, it's the salary of a really top-notch cook in a private household.

This was something quite spectacular,

it really was above and beyond the usual standard of extravagance.

Although Edward didn't attend the party,

he'd been a regular visitor as Prince of Wales.

In fact, his aristocratic set

helped make supper at the Savoy an institution

amongst smart society.

When people saw that they would come and have a lunch in a hotel,

which essentially was the same as dining in public,

instead of in their own private homes, it changed everything.

Suddenly, everybody started coming.

There were lots of other favourite dishes for the royals' birthday parties,

they were such extraordinarily lavish affairs.

You've got one, I think.

A pudding from the 21st birthday party of King Edward VII's eldest son.

Today I'm going to make savarin a l'orange.

It's the type of pudding you want to have at a big festival

or a big party. So I think I should get started.

I've already got a basic kind of dough in here,

just with the addition of eggs and orange zest.

Now I'm going to add the butter in, bit by bit.

This is exactly how you would make a brioche dough.

You want to add your butter bit by bit

so that it incorporates really well in with the mix.

And it's going to end up as a kind of rum baba.

I love rum baba. It's absolutely one of my favourite desserts, so, yeah,

it's kind of like a rum baba.

But actually, interestingly,

the kitchen maid from Buckingham Palace,

her recipe book in the early 1900s,

it's got a recipe for babas.

I think more of an everyday royal baba.

-This is a birthday party rum baba.

-I love it - everyday royal baba!

Yes, an everyday royal baba.

"Mix well," it says.

But she didn't have one of these mixers?

No, and I can't imagine what that was like.

Trying to make a baba, a brioche,

or a savarin dough without a machine would be a nightmare.

Exactly. Mildred must have had strong forearms, I think.

Yes, like Popeye!

So we are almost there.

You've got to have a bit of patience.

I'm trying to throw the butter in there because I just want to do it,

but really it's about adding it at the right pace.

But... Oops!

Then you're going to let it double in size,

then you're going to knock it back.

That means you're going to take all your anger out on the dough

and punch all the air out of it.

-Why are you pushing all the air out?

-Because we are exercising the dough.

You want to let it stretch.

That's proving it. Then you've got to knock it back,

so it can reprove again inside your mould,

so it can be perfect and light.

-Giving it a work-out.

-Yes, exactly.

Cover that with clingfilm, let it double in size.

Pop it in the oven, and then it comes out like this.

-It does look good.

-Doesn't it look good?

And this is when the fun really starts

because this is when we are going to soak it.

We are going to warm up your sugar, your rum and your orange juice,

and add your orange zest in there as well.

You want to just spike the savarin dough quite a bit

so that when you pour your syrup on, it soaks through.

You want to be able to soak it as quickly as possible.

because you do want your savarin to soak while it's warm, ideally.

It's amazing when you think of what these people ate.

-I know.

-This is at the end of a meal.

A 21st birthday party for Prince Albert Victor, at Sandringham.

Do you know what else they had before they even got round to this?

-No, but I know you're going to tell me.

-I've got it written down here.

They had, "Partridge, wild duck, pheasant, stag, turkey, salmon,

"oysters and turbot dressed in a lobster champagne sauce."

-Oh, my God!

-How much room would you have for your savarin after that, do you think?

They must have been dancing and having fun,

and it must be over a whole day, you know.

They had nothing else to do but party. They were very lucky.

Probably about the fourth meal of the day.

OK, look, it's soaking in, isn't it?

You want to continue adding all your syrup in gradually

every kind of five minutes or so,

until it's completely soaked through.

Which I have already done for you, Michael.

So here we have, this is the same, just turned the other way around.

It looks really soaked in the stuff.

But it's not finished. We have to finish it.

We need some cream and then we're going to, just at the end,

grate a little bit of the orange zest on top.

It just gives it that lovely, fresh,

kind of perfumey flavour from the orange.

So, I know you don't like cream, or sweets...

-Can't stand the stuff.

-No!

-That looks good, doesn't it?

-It does look good.

And then we're going to finish it with a bit of zest.

I love, I mean, my God, the smell that you get of the zest of...

-It's fabulous.

-Oh, it's lovely, isn't it?

-And you don't have to get that white bit of the pith.

-Exactly.

You just want to be careful you're just taking little shavings of it off.

You know, it was a birthday party.

It is a birthday cake, do you think candles?

No! No, candles would ruin it.

Anyway, there's a lot of rum in there, it might flambe up!

They are naff anyway, aren't they, candles on birthday cakes?

Unless you're five years old.

It seems a shame to cut it.

-But we will.

-Oh, we will.

There we go. I've got a plate.

Can you hear that?

That sounds delicious.

It's kind of sucking, almost, isn't it? There's a bit of a glug.

This sounds good.

Excellent.

Oh, look how the booze has soaked through.

I'll give you a little bit of extra cream, that's the best...

Don't stint on the cream, no.

That's not the best bit, the rum's the best bit.

Here we go.

-You go first.

-No, after you, you're the cook.

-OK, OK.

-I wouldn't normally be like this.

-I'd be in it before you.

-Look at that.

-I think you got...

-The best bit.

-..the best bit.

Here we go.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it soggy or is it soggy?

That is so good.

You can really get the orange in it.

The squeeze of booze and the orange.

Actually, that's really nice. I should think Prince Albert Victor,

if he were still conscious by this time,

hadn't eaten himself under the table, had a great birthday party.

That's brilliant, well done, Anna.

That's it from our celebration of royal birthdays.

See you next time.