Childhood 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 our own hand.

..from the present and the 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...

-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...

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 at 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 kitchenmaid'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 - dishes cooked for royal children throughout history.

A royal childhood may be like no other, but tastes in food can be

surprisingly familiar.

Today, in the Royal Recipes kitchen,

chef Paul Ainsworth cooks a royal nursery favourite - cottage pie...

Makes me feel like a child again.

-And it takes a lot to do that, I tell you.

-Fantastic.

..historian Annie Gray tours

the grand Wendy house where

Victoria and Albert's children learned to cook...

The children, they would come down to Swiss Cottage every day and cook.

And sometimes, their mother and her ladies would join them,

eating whatever they'd prepared.

..and former royal chef Darren McGrady cooks banana flan.

Perfect for the princes' school holidays.

We always knew when Prince William and Prince Harry were going

to be home because Princess Diana would write banana flan on the menu.

In the magnificence of the Victorian kitchen wing,

we start with the nursery food

guaranteed to keep any young royal happy.

This is the historic kitchen,

and this is the very modern

Michelin-starred chef Paul Ainsworth.

Kids' stuff today, Paul. Royal children's food.

-What are you going to do for us?

-Well, we're going to do a beautiful cottage pie.

-Cottage pie?

-Yeah.

-That is supposed to be Prince William's favourite,

or at least it was when he was a child.

Reportedly so, yeah, absolutely. And I love cottage pie.

So here we have, Michael, which is really important, the base. OK?

We've got carrots, onions, leek, celery.

And we're just going to add some thyme as well.

We're just going to get the thyme in there,

-which is beautiful.

-That's really herby, isn't it?

So we've got our delicious vegetables.

Garlic, thyme.

-OK. We're going to add a little pinch of cracked black pepper...

-Yeah.

..which is delicious. And a little bit of seasoning at this stage.

-That seasoning's going to really bring out the flavour of the vegetables.

-Yeah.

-Next, we've got our mushroom ketchup.

-Let me have a sniff.

It's delicious stuff.

-It does smell like Worcestershire sauce.

-It's very similar.

So a nice glug of that.

Now, we're going to add in our flour.

That's just going to mix with those vegetables and that lovely,

reduced mushroom ketchup.

And that's the base.

Now, we add in our lovely, browned mince.

OK. This is beef shin.

-That's just been roasted down so we've rendered that fat off.

-Yeah.

-In we go. Like so.

-Yeah.

-OK?

Now, we're adding in our beef stock.

SIZZLING

And go easy. Don't drown it.

Just covering, like that.

We don't want it too sloppy?

We don't. We want it to thicken nicely.

We want that really lovely flavour coming through from the mince,

our vegetables, the garlic, the thyme, and so on.

So even though it's children's food in a sense, it's nursery food,

it's not bland, is it?

It's not at all.

So this one's going to go into the oven.

-Yep.

-And here we have a mix that's come out the oven.

Look at that! All right?

And that is just rich, reduced.

We're going to transfer this now

into our pot. So, just like so.

Stand back. I wouldn't want to splash your jumper, Michael.

-In we go.

-I've only got the one!

-You can have one of mine.

-No, thank you.

-This is Prince William's favourite, or was Prince William's favourite.

-Yeah.

Some of the other royals, when they were children,

had...had, you know, really quite... I was about to say common taste.

Princess Anne, apparently, used to love having fish and chips,

traditional-style, out of a newspaper.

Right, OK. That's the only way to have fish and chips.

There's something nostalgic about that.

OK. Now, we're just going to very...

We're not doing it in a piping bag, we're not getting fancy with it,

-we're just spooning it on.

-Sloshing it on.

-Yeah, sloshing it on like that.

You know what I love, is when it comes up the sides

and it boils over a bit and you've got the potato mixes...

..with that lovely mince mix.

-OK.

-Wow.

-Right, OK.

So you see we've got it like that?

-Now, you're going to smooth it out a bit?

-We're going to take our fork.

Smooth it over like that.

-You see where we're making the lines...

-Yeah.

They're all now those individual lines -

they catch under the grill.

-And they get crusty.

-And that's what gets crusty.

-If you just didn't do that, it wouldn't...

-Yeah.

You wouldn't get those spiky, crispy bits, which are delicious.

Cheese on. And that is ready for the oven.

Half an hour at about 180 degrees,

and then just finish under the grill

so you get all those lovely, crispy bits.

The cheese will be bubbling.

-Beautiful!

-Little crusty, brown bits.

I've got one out there - would you mind getting it for me?

THEY LAUGH

MICHAEL GROANS

This is really, really heavy.

-And it smells sensational.

-That is sensational, isn't it?

-Let's dish up.

-Absolutely.

-Let's dish up.

-Don't hold back.

-Wow!

Wow! Right.

-(OK.)

-Oh, I say.

I'm going to go in like that.

-Oh, that looks good.

-Then, some more of that beautiful, rich mix.

-Mm-hm.

-Then you've got that crispy cheese on top.

-Yep.

And just a little extra.

Just a bit more of it.

Like that.

I can't get enough of the cheese.

-Absolutely delicious.

-MICHAEL LAUGHS

-There we are, Michael.

-OK.

-Cottage pie...

-Give me a fork.

-..for you.

-The gold one.

-Yes, of course.

-There's a plastic one there for you.

I've got a plastic one here, yeah.

OK, here we go.

I'm going to have a bit of both.

There we go.

-Some of your cheese.

-Yeah.

Mm.

It makes me feel like a child again.

And it takes a lot to do that, I tell you.

-Fantastic. Glad you're enjoying it.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here we go.

Mm!

A comforting taste of childhood.

Historically, royal children have always had their own chefs,

and some even had their very own kitchen to play in.

Historian Dr Annie Gray is at Osborne House,

where one royal couple created a pint-sized paradise

to give their nine children a taste of real, rather than royal, life.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Victoria's children

didn't have the most fun time.

But here in the grounds of Victoria and Albert's private residence

at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight,

deep in the woods lurks something to help change your mind.

And this is it -

a traditional, wooden, Swiss cottage

commissioned by Victoria and Albert and built in 1854.

A place for the children to learn how to grow food as well as cook it.

Here, they used to come and use their miniature wheelbarrows

and miniature sets of tools to grow fruit and vegetables,

which they then sold on to their father, Prince Albert, at market price.

The children looked back as adults on their gardens very, very fondly,

and it's clear that they absolutely loved coming here,

playing in the gardens, growing everything,

and eating everything as well.

These gardens really were a little slice of paradise.

The Swiss cottage style was very fashionable in mid-19th century gardens.

But this house was all about the children,

and was even built to 3/4 scale.

So why did the royal children learn to cook?

Clearly, they were never going to have to actually cook for themselves.

They were expected to marry into the royal families of Europe,

or perhaps the aristocracy.

But that wasn't the point.

Not only was this an idealised version of the childhood that

Victoria never had, but the cooking and the gardening

and the playing with toy shops all had a purpose.

It kept the children grounded in reality and it made sure that,

when they were controlling servants of their own,

they would know what should be going on inside the kitchens and the

gardens that they ruled over,

so that they could better control their own servants.

The idea of royal domestic training was very unusual at the time.

But Victoria and Albert were determined to keep the children

in touch with reality.

By the late 1850s, the children had settled into a fairly set routine.

They would come down to Swiss Cottage every day and cook -

either tea or lunch -

and sometimes their mother and her ladies would join them,

eating whatever they'd prepared.

For birthday parties,

the house would be decked out with bunting and they'd cook

birthday cakes for each other and celebrate.

There's remarkably little record of what was actually cooked here.

A few mentions in journals and diaries.

Something, for example, like a simple sponge cake.

In this case, the original Victoria sandwich.

Today, we think of a Victoria sponge sandwich

as one large, usually round cake, chopped in two,

spread with raspberry or strawberry jam and then a layer of cream.

But the original Victoria sponge was more like a finger sandwich

made of fatless sponge cut up to look like white bread and

spread with jam made from fruit from the children's own garden.

The children were usually cooking for each other,

but their mother would come down quite a lot

and share a tea with them, or perhaps a luncheon.

Kippers aren't the first thing that comes to mind as nursery food.

But, according to Buckingham Palace staff at the time,

the Queen developed her love for kippers as a child.

She was playing at Windsor Castle with her sister, Princess Margaret,

when she caught the aroma of kippers

coming from the royal kitchens,

and she's loved them ever since.

This is a royal dish.

Kipper puree.

Rather like gentlemen's relish.

You have it on toast. A favourite with...

royals, adults and children alike.

Mm.

-That's pretty nice.

-Quite an old-fashioned word that, puree.

We'd probably know that now as pate.

-Yeah.

-Quite coarse.

-Mm.

Really nice. Kippers have been in favour with the royal family,

-haven't they...

-Yes.

-..all along?

Even when kippers slightly fell out of favour with the rest of us

around about the '70s or 1980s.

-It's a shame really, isn't it?

-It is.

I think they're quite strong.

And I think it's sometimes maybe the smell when they're cooking.

There's a lot of bones to them as well.

OK, so what are you going to do with kippers?

We are going to make a beautiful kipper stata.

Not a kipper starter?

-That as well.

-Yeah?!

-Kipper stata.

-OK.

We're going to use these wonderful Manx kippers.

So if you just see, they're basically brined, OK?

And then smoked.

Right, it's a very simple dish.

I've just changed it slightly,

just to kind of get more flavour

into it than the sort of original recipe.

So here we've got some leeks.

Rather than just boiling those in water,

I've sweated them down in butter.

Cooked them without colour in butter.

A little pinch of seasoning with the lid on,

so all that flavour stays in the leek and not in the water.

-Looks really soft.

-Absolutely.

Rather than just putting raw onion in there, I've sliced the onion,

nice and thin, and I've just salted it.

That kind of removes some of the water and breaks the onion down

a little bit so it's not quite so raw.

-Our dressing, we're going to use some balsamic vinegar.

-Yeah.

OK.

We're going to have a little splash.

This is like making a basic dressing.

You can see a really good quality vinegar - nice and thick.

-OK.

-This is a more recent recipe in fact, isn't it?

A royal recipe. In fact,

it first seemed to emerge in a cookbook

-that was published in honour of the Queen Mother.

-Right. OK.

-Yeah.

-So it must have been one of her favourites, I suppose.

-Yes.

Yeah. You can see straightaway,

because we had that lovely, thick, balsamic vinegar,

it goes thick straightaway, as soon as we emulsify the oil.

A little bit of salt.

Now, we're going to add in a spoonful of our buttered leeks.

These are gorgeous cos they're nice and soft.

-Wonderful flavour coming from the leek.

-Yeah.

-Our raw onion.

It's quite a fascinating recipe, this.

Very unusual.

But just by salting it, that onion now, it's not too strong.

Just mix that together.

So I'm going to put some fresh parsley in there,

-which goes absolutely beautiful with this mix.

-Yeah.

Like that. I'll just put some fresh parsley.

Because we got that lovely onion and leek in there,

we're going to put some chive in there,

-just so it all marries together.

-Yeah.

So we're just going to chop some...

Finely chop some chives.

Not normally kippers are a favourite of children,

so it's rather surprising in a way it has been a favourite of

several of the royal children down the generations.

-What's great about it is the health benefits.

-Yeah, yeah.

So we've got our kipper in there.

Now, we just bring that mix...

OK. Now, we're going to come over to our toast.

A nice piece of crispy sourdough, like that.

Yes, bring it over.

-OK.

-I'll make you some room.

-Thank you very much.

-There you go.

I've got my golden fork.

-My trademark.

-Let me cut you a piece.

-Let me cut you a piece.

-All right.

Patience.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

-Not my vir...

-There we are.

-I haven't got a mouth THAT big.

Come on. I'm just going to get at it.

There we go. Don't look.

Beautiful!

-That is really delicious.

-Mm!

When I read this recipe, I had my reservations and stuff,

-but it so works.

-Mm!

-It's delicious.

-Kipper stata.

The Queen Mother's starter.

-Fantastic!

-One to remember her with.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I'm here in the library of the house with Ingrid Seward

of Majesty Magazine and author of A Royal Childhood.

So...how do they eat?

They always eat in the nursery.

The nursery is like the fiefdom of nanny.

And the nursery footman.

And they eat at precisely 4:30 for tea,

which is half an hour before the grown-ups.

And then they have supper at seven o'clock.

But always separate from their parents?

Well, they only eat with their parents when they can sit up straight,

not fidget, and hold a knife and fork properly.

But Prince Charles thought this was a bit archaic and he'd try something

else, so he requested that Prince William should be brought down

to have breakfast with him one day.

Now, William was still in a high chair.

And William got hold of an egg and, instead of eating it,

he just dropped it on the floor.

Prince Charles said, "I don't think we'll be repeating this experiment."

So it sounds like for royal children,

they almost eat in an ordinary way,

not grand at all?

Well, it's not grand, but it isn't that ordinary either.

On one occasion, when Charles was a little bit older,

he was going to go to a custard pie party.

I don't think people have those any more!

Anyway, so the chef cooked all these beautiful custard pies,

but they weren't set solid.

And when he arrived at the party and got the vats of custard

out of the back, they were still a bit wobbly - he didn't realise that.

Anyhow, when Charles came to throw his custard pies,

they were still wet inside, and they had to have the whole room

redecorated. That sort of...

They love throwing things.

Love throwing food.

Ingrid, thanks.

Darren McGrady spent more than 15 years cooking for the royal family.

Four of those cooking for Diana and the boys at Kensington Palace,

where a popular dish was banana flan.

We always knew when Prince William and Prince Harry were going to be

home because Princess Diana would write banana flan on the menu.

So to make the pastry, the first part of the dish,

I've got a food processor, and I'm going to add some flour.

And some sugar. And then butter.

If the butter is really chilled,

the pastry you can start rolling straightaway.

And then a little bit of vanilla.

MIXER WHIRS

We don't want to over-beat it,

because if we do, we just tighten the mixture.

And then into that, we can add an egg and then mix that in.

As you can see, all this pastry comes together, then.

This seems firm enough for me to roll out.

And we want it nice and thin, not too thick.

So once it is rolled out, fold it back onto the rolling pin,

and then over your dish.

The secret here is actually to lift and push with your finger.

Then you go across the top with a rolling pin,

and all the excess dough comes off.

Then it goes on a baking tray, and we have to blind bake it.

Take a little bit of parchment paper,

put it into the bottom of our pastry ring.

There we go. We have to put some weights.

And we're using ceramic baking beans.

If you don't have these at home, you can use rice.

The pastry takes 15 minutes at 180 degrees.

The next step is making the custardy, creamy filling.

For the pastry cream, I'm going to start off with some eggs.

I use five yolks and one whole egg.

Then I need to boil some milk and cream.

While that's boiling, into my bowl I'm going to put some sugar...

..some cornflour, a little vanilla...

..and a pinch of salt.

And then whisk all this together.

Once the milk and the cream comes to the boil,

I can just pour that now straight onto my egg mixture.

Once it's all mixed in,

it goes back into the pan on the stove.

You just carry on whisking this until it all starts to thicken up.

It goes into a bowl, a nice clean bowl...

..and then a little bit of grease-proof paper over the top

to stop a skin forming.

And then into the refrigerator to set and cool down.

Once the pastry cream is made, we can then check on the flan.

It should be a nice golden-brown now.

Look at that. Beautiful.

Carefully lift the parchment paper off.

Now, it just needs to go back in the oven, just to harden up that base,

The pastry's been in for a further five minutes.

It should be ready now. While the flan's cooling,

we can move onto the next stage,

and that is to make the apricot jam.

I'm going to heat the jam until it softens slightly,

and that'll make much easier to spread.

Then I can get my pastry cream.

The pastry cream has just cooled nicely.

All I need to do is just stir that.

Mm, that smells so good.

And then pour this into my flan

and spread it nice and evenly.

Then the bananas we can arrange neatly and stack them and overlap

them to make it look pretty. I can take my jam and brush over the top.

It makes a beautiful, sweet glaze,

but at the same time stops the bananas from going brown.

Once the jam is on there, covering all the bananas,

that is what we're looking for.

That is the banana flan that Prince William loved so much.

The perfect dessert.

Over 100 years earlier, at Buckingham Palace,

kitchenmaid Mildred Nicholls would have prepared tea and puddings

for the children of George V and Queen Mary,

as well as cakes such as...

That banana flan must have kept generations of royal children happy,

-don't you think?

-It sounded like good times to me.

It did - good times, yeah.

When our Buckingham Palace kitchenmaid, Mildred Nicholls,

was writing her recipes in this book,

there were six children running around the palace.

-But that era of Edwardian extravagance was over, really...

-Yeah.

..because King George V was pretty stern and austere. And Queen Mary,

not to put too fine a point on it, was a bit of a penny-pincher.

And it reflects in this recipe.

We're making Swiss roll today.

But usually you would make the base, the sponge, with flour, and

-we're using breadcrumbs.

-Straight out of Mildred's recipe book?

-Straight out of Mildred's recipe.

-With breadcrumbs.

-Have you ever used breadcrumbs in Swiss roll?

-Never in Swiss roll.

Let's taste - it might actually be really nice.

-Here we go.

-Right, OK, on you go.

-Right.

So what we've got in here is basically eggs and sugar,

and we've just whisked them up,

-and we are going to turn that back on.

-Yup.

And what this is, it is called a sabayon.

-Sabayon?

-A sabayon. So it's basically the sugar and the eggs

are just whisked until they go nice and thick and fluffy.

-Yes.

-Now, we're going to add in our breadcrumb.

This is basically like a...

our kind of cake dough, so it's very, very simple.

Just going to turn that up, and just basically whisk it all in.

But it be a bit of difference, having breadcrumbs

-rather than flour, surely?

-Yes.

-Breadcrumbs must be coarser?

Absolutely, and I think there will be a textural difference as well.

As you can see, you've got those kind of grains of the breadcrumb in.

-Yeah.

-So we're just going to take that out of there, Michael.

-OK.

-Remove the whisk.

Not that I suppose King George V would have noticed.

He was very, very austere in his taste.

He used to have thin soup at 11 o'clock.

-Thin soup at 11 o'clock?

-Yeah.

And the thing he really liked was mashed potatoes, apparently.

And did they have to have lumps in, or no lumps?

Probably! And apple dumplings was the only dessert he really liked.

-Apple dumplings?

-Yeah. Lovely.

Right, so, again, we just put in the mix right into the corners.

We don't want any air.

-Right.

-So we just get in all of that mix.

So you can see, quite simple -

just breadcrumbs, the sugar and the eggs, whisked.

This wouldn't have stretched Mildred too far, would it?

No, I don't think so.

So just into the corners.

Yeah.

And the important thing, Michael,

is just to make sure that there's no air in the mixture.

So just a gentle tap.

-As you can see, you've got those little pockets.

-Yep.

-The reason for that is you don't get holes in the sponge.

-Yeah.

Like that. Now, if I could send you to the scullery.

That's my natural role.

If you could put that in the oven, it's ten minutes, 200 degrees.

-And you know the drill.

-Yes, Chef.

-Can you bring me back the other one?

-Of course.

-Thank you.

-OK, Chef.

Here we go.

-Look at that!

-It LOOKS nice, doesn't it?

-It does, and it smells quite nice.

-Yeah!

-Whether it tastes nice...

-Fantastic.

-..let's see.

-What next?

-So now we've got our sponge made,

this is the next kind of important thing.

You know that lovely kind of almost crispy texture around the outside of

-Swiss roll, the sugar?

-Yeah.

So we're just going to sprinkle our sugar...

-I'll get out of your way.

-..all over the tea towel.

I'm going to be quite liberal with it, because we want...

-It's important, while it's warm...

-Excuse me a sec.

-Sorry, is it on your shoes?

-You've frosted me trousers.

-There we go.

-That's it, all over like this.

And while it's warm, Michael, the sugar will stick.

-So that is why you've got to do it while it's warm, eh?

-Absolutely.

So now, turn her over like that.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES

And just gently -

you've got to work quite quickly as well -

-just peel off from underneath like that. OK?

-Yeah.

Just like that.

And it's so important to do this while it's warm.

-There we go. OK.

-Now, this is Swiss roll with breadcrumbs, eh?

-Absolutely.

-Rather than flour.

Now, you want to get a really tight roll, OK?

But don't get the cloth trapped in the middle,

which I know sounds obvious, but is not as easy as you think.

So just keep going over till you've

-got your first roll, like this.

-Yeah.

And the reason you are doing it warm...

is so that you get the fold.

Can you see the sugar coating it?

-Yeah.

-Now, go all the way over, like that.

It would be terribly easy to get the cloth trapped,

then you'd be completely snookered.

Yeah, that's why you have got to keep it there, absolutely.

Now, the whole idea now...

-..is leave that there...

-Yeah.

-..and that's basically going to set,

so it's almost a bit muscle memory, if you like.

Muscle memory!

-So we are just going to...

-So it only rolls one way, like snails?

-Absolutely.

-Snail shells, yeah.

-We want it to cool...

-Yeah.

-..so we get this.

Like so. Now, we pull that cloth back.

Now that's cooled down, see that lovely sugar crust?

Now, you can see the whole Swiss roll taking shape.

-Yup.

-Don't worry about it.

It wants to curl back because of its muscle memory?

Because of its muscle memory. You like that word, don't you?

-Now, what's this?

-This is Mildred's actual recipe of creme patisserie.

So, basically, a really thick custard.

How different is it from just ordinary custard?

-No different at all, actually.

-Oh, right.

This is just egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, milk,

and then some flour to thicken it.

So I want to make sure we have got plenty of custard.

What, just in case it doesn't...

-it doesn't feel cakey and fancy enough...

-Absolutely, yes.

-..with the breadcrumbs?

Yeah, so right over like this. Very liberal.

Cos I don't think Queen Mary, you know, was that much of a foodie.

Now, one of my favourites -

and also Mildred as well - rhubarb jam.

Absolutely delicious.

Who doesn't like rhubarb and custard?

Right, and then, same again.

Keeping the tea towel out,

just roll it back a bit.

It should be easier, shouldn't it?

Yeah, absolutely, because you've got the muscle memory.

The muscle memory, yeah. Why do it with the tea towel and not

just, now, just roll it with your hands?

Because I want to keep it nice and tight, Michael.

Now, with a palette knife we'll just get that,

because we don't want to waste it.

Push that like that on the ends.

So that is Mildred's Swiss roll.

Now, would you like a slice?

-Oh, I think I could force one down(!)

-Yeah.

Right.

I'll get myself a fork.

Yeah, get yourself a fork.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES

-Right.

-There we are.

-Thank you.

-Get stuck in.

-I will.

How's that?

Mmm.

Mm! It's the...

it's the crust and the sugar that's nice,

and the cream and the rhubarb.

HE SMACKS HIS LIPS

Mm!

-You can see children would love it.

-Delicious.

OK, that's it from our celebration of cooking for royal children.

See you next time.