Royal Consorts Royal Recipes

'The Royal Family is 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...'

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.'

Pheasants, stag, turkey, salmon, oysters and turbot

dressed in a lobster champagne sauce.

Unbelievable.

This is Royal Recipes.

Hello. I'm Michael Burke, 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.

And for the first time in over a hundred years,

we'll be bringing these recipes back to life.

This time, we are cooking food

inspired by royal consorts past and present.

The husbands and wives who supported the crown and its heirs.

Today in the Royal Recipes kitchen,

top chef Anna Haugh tests her skills

on Prince Philip's favourite dessert,

a tricky souffle.

Oh!

Ooh-hoo-hoo!

I nearly dropped it.

Look at that.

Diana's former chef reveals the Princess's favourite home cooking.

People always assume that the royal family lived on caviar and lobster,

but it wasn't like that at all.

And how one king satisfied generations

of the chocolate-loving wives of Windsor.

This box holds three kilos of chocolates

and it will set you back £1,700.

In the kitchen wing of this elegant stately home,

we start our tribute to the royal consorts

with a dish named after perhaps the most famous consort of them all,

Victoria's Prince Albert.

Hello, and here we are in the kitchen wing of this historic house,

still very much as it was in Victorian times,

with Anna Haugh who is a top London chef.

This programme, Anna, is all about food

that's inspired by or named after royal other halves.

That's right, and today, I'm going to do

fillet of beef, Prince Albert.

Prince Albert, the original royal consort,

Victoria's husband, of course, who died at the early age of 42.

But this is named after him?

That's right.

And although this looks like a very special,

kind of, complicated dish to prepare, it's really quite simple.

-Mm-hm.

-So, the first thing you need to do is lay out your streaky bacon

all kind of layered on top of each other

and then get a fillet of beef, roughly about...

I'd say this is 500-600g, depends.

This should get you about maybe four portions.

-A lovely chunk of meat.

-A lovely chunk of meat.

And then you want to cut it straight down the centre, almost halfway.

And then I'm going to place the duck liver pate in the centre.

Would the original dish have had duck liver pate?

I think it probably would have been foie gras.

-Foie gras?

-Foie gras.

-Yeah.

-But I think nowadays, people would rather not use foie gras.

Because the geese are force-fed, aren't they,

-to make their livers swell?

-Yeah.

I think everybody would prefer...

-Do you use foie gras in your recipes?

-I don't, no.

I used to, but, no, my conscience got the better of me.

OK.

OK, so you want to just fold your beef over

and then just give it a nice, tight squeeze.

You take the grease paper with you?

Yes. Give it a good squeeze. It's a slow motion. No hurry.

And then just as you're about to get around to the other side,

you want to just lift up your grease-proof

so that the bacon meets each other, give it a bit of a squish down.

What's the idea of the bacon? What's it meant to add to the dish?

So the bacon actually holds in this invisible slice,

that little secret slice that you've put in there.

So when you look at that, it just looks like...

I don't know, like a fillet of beef wrapped in bacon.

But when you cut into it, you've got the lovely surprise of the parfait.

I think although this could just be called

a fillet of beef wrapped in bacon,

I think there's something very romantic and quite special

that it's called after Prince Albert.

I think it's lovely that it's got a special name.

There's a lot of dishes named after him, you know.

There's a sprout and bacon soup.

-Ooft.

-Yeah. I'm not sure I'd like to go down in history...

That's not very glamorous.

..being remembered for sprout and bacon soup.

I'd rather have a real, regal meaty dish, like this, named after me.

So, you can see I've got a lovely smoking hot pan.

You want to put the side down that is where the bacon meets first.

-So that seals it?

-You want to seal that closed. Yeah.

And get a gorgeous, caramelised edge around it all.

You like your pans hot, don't you?

I do, I do. I like to be on borderline fire hazard.

Who doesn't love the smell of fried bacon?

Like, who doesn't love that?

The fire brigade, I imagine.

Or vegetarians.

Yeah, so, I'm just trying to get a gorgeous colour all around this.

-Yeah.

-To really encourage the best kind of flavour

and the lovely saltiness of the cure,

going into the fillet of beef. I mean, what a lovely idea.

I suppose this is a kind of dish for royals, isn't it?

I mean, it's expensive.

The fillet like that, the duck liver pate...

-Yeah.

-Pretty expensive ingredients.

Or a very posh, expensive restaurant like yours, Anna.

Well, you get quite a few portions out of this

and I don't think that there's any waste.

That's another great thing about beef fillet.

You don't waste any of it, and I think that's quite good.

OK, so, I'm going to lift this over now for our mirepoix.

Oh, wow.

Place it on top of mirepoix.

It's a selection of household vegetables,

carrots, garlic, onions and celery.

So, we're going to pop this into the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees.

And when we're cooking it, the mirepoix,

or the vegetables at the bottom,

the aroma from them as they cook will be soaked into the meat.

Mmm!

-Is this my role?

-Yes, please.

And you should find a little beautiful pre-cooked one

-ready to go.

-Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Right, Chef.

-Look at that.

-Look at that. It's wonderful, isn't it?

-Perfectly roasted.

-And it's heavy too.

Right, so, the next thing we need to do is remove the meat,

because we're going to make the gravy with the sauce that's in here.

So if I just lift up the tray onto the stove,

start a fire underneath...

You're going to do both burners?

Yes. And all I'm going to do is add a little bit of flour,

a little bit of Madeira.

Yes, you can't have too much Madeira, I always think.

I agree, I agree.

OK, so just give that a quick whisk in.

Why do we cook more with Madeira than actually drink it?

I don't know about you, I'm pretty fond of drinking my Madeira.

HE CHUCKLES

So in goes Madeira.

Oh, that's looking very good.

-Yeah.

-And smelling... Come this way.

SHE CHUCKLES

Add a little beef stock to this now as well.

Yes, Albert had loads of things named after him.

There's an apple named after him.

-Oh, really?

-There's a kind of pea that is named after him.

And some white pudding as well.

Have you heard of Sauce Albert?

No, I haven't heard of Sauce Albert.

Well, apparently, there is one.

OK, so we're just going to whisk in a little bit of butter,

because I can't help myself, just for a little bit of richness.

-You chefs!

-I know, I know.

And all this does is just give it a little bit more body,

a little nicer, glossy finish.

To a non-chefy kind of person,

it's amazing still how much butter and cream is used,

even in new, modern style kitchens.

But when you think about it, one or two knobs of butter

that I popped in there,

and how many people will be served from this sauce?

But the impact butter has, it's quite dramatic.

Right, so what goes really well with this is a creamy dauphinoise

and some freshly steamed bobby beans.

-Bobby beans?

-Bobby beans, yes.

-What are they then?

-England's answer to French beans.

Oh, I'd have called that a French bean. But they're a bit...fatter?

I think they're more delicious.

-They're altogether superior to French beans.

-Yeah, absolutely.

OK, so, put a few of them on the base of the plate.

And the dauphinoise, which I'm sure you wouldn't like at all.

Oh, I can't stand dauphinoise potatoes.

-They look good.

-They do look good!

So rich!

I love the way you compose these things.

-Well, you know...

-It's artistry, isn't it?

A decade and a half of training.

Oh, look at the way the knife goes through that.

Look at that.

All pink on the inside.

The pate there is a kind of vein.

And look at the lovely juice coming out of it as well.

-Oh!

-Ooh, yeah.

-Fabulous.

Oh, I could do that a bit of damage.

THEY CHUCKLE

-Oh, wow.

-And let's not forget the sauce.

Now, I'd go all over it,

but you do a delicate bit on the side, don't you?

But it's a jus, is it?

-It's a jus, yes.

-It's a jus.

A Madeira jus to go with a fillet of beef Prince Albert

with bobby beans and dauphinoise potatoes.

Looks too good to eat.

No, it doesn't. There you go.

-Can I have a go?

-Yes.

Mm!

Mmm!

Oh, that's good.

The bacon on the outside is just so delicious.

Fit for a king.

Well, definitely fit for a prince consort.

SHE LAUGHS

Prince Albert remembered in a symphony of a dish.

A rich and delicious meal for any table.

Another royal consort with many dishes to her name

is Queen Alexandra.

Historian Dr Polly Russell explores the tastes

of this popular Danish princess.

Charming and beautiful,

Princess Alexandra was brought to Britain in 1863

to marry Queen Victoria's eldest son,

the Prince of Wales, otherwise known as Bertie.

And from the moment she stepped on these shores,

she was loved by the British people.

Polly Russell has come to London's Alexandra House,

the home for music students, opened by Alexandra herself in 1884,

to meet food writer Fiona Ross.

Fiona, here we are in Alexandra House.

It's the most beautiful room, isn't it, this drawing room?

Yes, it's incredible. Yeah, absolutely gorgeous.

But Alexandra, as Princess and a Queen, incredibly popular,

really loved in her time.

Why was she so important to the Royal Family at that time?

I think that Victoria had been so reclusive,

in a way, so remote from her people,

there were stirrings of republicanism.

Whereas Alexandra offered a freshness to the Royal Family

that completely reworked their fortunes.

She was basically the Princess Di of her day.

Do we know what influence Alexandra had

on how the Royal Family ate at the time?

She had much more modest appetites than Bertie.

He just inhaled banquets.

But she couldn't really do very much about it,

because state banquets and state dinners

were prescribed, weren't they?

In a sense she did influence the couple's dietary habits,

by suggesting that they have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding

on a Sunday. This was seen as a light...

..a light and healthy relief from the diet during the week.

-And I think...

-Comparatively, I suppose, it was?

Comparatively, yes!

Alexandra was an experienced cook herself.

It was something she and her sister learned in Denmark.

Alexandra and Dagmar performed a range of servants' duties

on the days when the servants were off.

If it was the summer they would make rodgrod,

which is a concoction of red berries thickened with potato starch

and served perhaps with raspberry jelly and cream.

And the recipe for rodgrod is to be found in the cookbook

of our palace kitchen maid, Mildred Nicholls.

Do we know if she ever cooked that here, or...?

I don't know whether or not Alexandra

would have cooked that herself,

but she certainly loved to have that on the royal table.

-Right.

-And it would be served as a dessert.

Though the gentlemen attending the royal table

would see it as a ridiculously effeminate dessert,

so they refused to take it.

Polly is going to try her hand at making rodgrod.

The blackcurrants in the original recipe are out of season,

so we are using blueberries with the raspberries.

First stage is to boil the berries.

Just need to add some water.

It's nice to think of this dish which Alexandra so loved

and served up to guests at post-theatre suppers,

but it was also something that she ate

in her family home back in Denmark for breakfast.

So something that was clearly very nostalgic

or comforting for her as a dish.

This has come to the boil.

I'm going to strain it through a fruit muslin.

Next, she adds arrowroot as a thickener,

though they would have used sago,

a type of starch in Alexandra's time.

Last thing is to add in some vanilla and the claret,

which, I think, will transform this from being

like a child's pudding to an adult dessert.

It's going to give it a slightly more luxurious, royal taste.

Once boiled for ten minutes, it's ready to serve.

It hasn't turned into the mousse or syllabub I was expecting,

it looks rather like a thickened soup.

But I'm just going to add a little bit of cream

and then I'm going to taste it and see what it's like.

I think the texture's wrong, but the flavour's delicious.

It tastes like a sort of raspberry, berry soup.

I can see why Alexandra loved it.

Queen Alexandra wasn't the only royal other half

to bring food from her native land to this country.

Wallis Simpson, the American whose affair with Edward VIII

led to the abdication,

she is said to have wooed him with American dishes like this -

Maryland fried chicken.

Let's see if I'd be wooed.

Come on.

Mmm.

Bit of a passing similarity

to what you can get in one of those fast-food emporiums

on the high street, I would say.

Could you be wooed with this, do you think?

I don't think I could be wooed with fried chicken.

My tastes are a little bit more expensive.

Maybe after an evening's heavy drinking, I don't know.

You're absolutely right.

But Wallis Simpson was a foodie,

despite the fact that she was really very slim,

and despite the fact that she very famously said

"You can't be too rich or too thin."

And you're going to do one of her other dishes, aren't you?

Yes, I am. I'm going to make Montego Bay ice

with a buttery rum sauce to go on top.

First of all, I'm going to make the ice.

It's similar to a sorbet, it's a very light, refreshing dessert.

So, you need the zest of two limes

and juice of four of them.

So when you are zesting a lime,

just be careful that you don't go too far.

-You don't get the white bit?

-Yeah, that's what kind of makes it.

And they're fairly thin-skinned, limes, quite often, aren't they?

-Much thinner skinned than lemons.

-Exactly, yes.

That's true, that is true.

-I know about these things.

-The smell is beautiful, isn't it?

-It does.

-Isn't that fresh?

I feel like it hits a part of your brain

-and makes you feel more awake.

-It reminds me of gin and tonic.

-LAUGHING:

-Yes, that's probably it. Exactly!

So I'm just going to juice this lime now.

-Mm-hm.

-And it's a very easy recipe -

you just whisk all the other ingredients in together,

the sugar, the milk, a little bit of water.

And do you use one of those kind of juicers?

You don't kind of squeeze it in your hand?

It's because I'm very lazy, so, you know, I let the juicer do the work.

Then you're going to churn the ice cream for me.

-Am I?

-Yes.

-OK, yep, yep.

OK, so, just add the other ingredients in.

Pretty easy, it's just water.

-So the milk.

-Mm-hmm.

-Yep. And sugar?

-Sugar.

Just give it a really good whisk.

Montego Bay is in the Caribbean, isn't it?

That's right, yeah. Yes, it is.

When he was the Duke of Windsor after the abdication,

he was made governor of the Bahamas,

because it was the war and they wanted him out of the way.

And then the last thing to add is just a pinch of salt.

Salt seems rather odd in a pudding.

Well, salt is an enhancer.

Sometimes, people think you put salt in food so it tastes salty,

but actually, it can make the ingredients...

-Bring out all the other flavours?

-That's exactly it.

-The lime and so on.

-Yeah.

-So you're going to take this to the ice cream maker.

-OK, Chef.

You're going to pour that in and churn it,

and bring me back the other one from earlier.

-Are you sure it's ready?

-Yeah...

-It looks very thin.

Well, yeah, it's like a kind of sorbet.

It's less kind of thick than what you would associate

-with an ice cream.

-OK, I'll be back in two shakes.

Well, it's certainly churned.

-Yeah, that's great.

-Where do you want it?

-On your board will be fine.

-OK.

OK, so, next, I'm going to make the buttered rum sauce,

which is delicious.

In here, I've got double cream and some vanilla,

and I'm going to add in the brown sugar.

Definitely not light.

Definitely not light.

But you don't want it to be,

I mean, your ice is kind of quite fresh and light,

where this gives it a lovely richness.

I love the smell of lovely brown caramelised sugar.

So, once your sugar's dissolved,

I'm going to add the rum and we are going to bring it up to the boil.

Wallis Simpson had quite a reputation as a cook,

or at least as a giver of dinner parties.

-Is that rum?

-This is the rum, ready to go in.

This is my kind of pudding.

She apparently was credited with bringing in

hot hors d'oeuvres,

which were quite a novelty in London when she arrived.

She picked up the way of miniaturising hot dishes

in China, apparently. She'd lived in China

before she met the Duke.

So the last ingredient is our butter,

our cubed butter that we're going to whisk in.

Yeah. Strange, isn't it, that she should serve this kind of dish?

The woman who said "You can't be too thin."

"Let's have some more butter in there!

"Let's have some more rum! Let's have some more brown sugar!"

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

-Yeah.

I'm going to take it off the heat now.

-You can smell it.

-You can, you can.

-It's the rum, of course.

-Yeah.

You're boiling off all that wonderful alcohol.

No, I've taken it off the heat now. Taken it off the heat.

Don't want to do too much of that!

No. And you want to pour this on the ice cream when it's...

It's kind of, like... It's not hot, but it's not cold,

so we've just got a little bit of a temperature in it.

I think we're done.

-What's that?

-That's the vanilla pod.

-Oh, yes, of course.

-Working its way out there, I should get rid of that.

I thought it was an eel for a moment.

Not that kind of dish, eh?

OK.

Oh, that's rather crafty. You're putting it in a jug first.

Because I'm a bit fancy.

-Oh, you are.

-OK. So, now, I'm going to ball our ice actually.

-So let me see.

-Yeah.

Oh, that's nice.

Do you like this idea? I mean, you're a professional cook,

so you're professionally cooking it,

but is it the sort of thing that you would have yourself?

I would absolutely order this in a heartbeat.

Would you not?

-I'm not sure, really.

-You don't like it?

I'm not really a pudding person.

But, you know, I'm converting.

Now, you put three dollops...

I am, and I'm going to do one more on top...

-Oh, right.

-My water's not very hot for this.

You need a hot spoon to do that. They're special...

What do you call that? A balling spoon?

-Yeah, well, it's an ice cream baller.

-Oh, right, right.

This is a fancy one, because it's in a nice shape.

And then we finish it with the hot sauce on top.

Oh, now, that's looks good.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Do you want to do the honours?

-I will. Put it down there.

A rather big spoon, but it'll do.

Big spoons are me.

-Two spoons.

-No, come on, you can help.

Go on, you made it. You're first dabs.

You're very good.

-I see you've got...

-I'm more interested in the sauce!

Quite a lot of the rum, as far as I can see!

Ooh! That packs a punch.

Mmm.

Mm.

It does, doesn't it?

I could watch you eat all day.

-Mmm!

-I love how you have to keep going back...

"I'm just not sure about that, just a little bit more."

I've got this whole bowl here.

I'm not quite sure. But you can imagine, can't you?

Duke and Duchess of Windsor, their celebrity friends,

somewhere in the Bahamas, and at the end of the evening...

..it would almost make up for not being king, I suppose.

But there you go.

Diana Princess of Wales has to be

one of the most celebrated royal consorts.

She had her own distinctive style,

and that extended to the kitchen

and the sort of food she liked to be served,

as her former cook Carolyn Robb remembers well.

When Carolyn Robb first joined the Royal Household,

little did she know she'd spend 11 years with the Princess of Wales.

Together, they shaped and updated the royal home cooking menus.

Today, I'm going to do something that I used to prepare a lot

for Princess Diana.

Stuffed aubergine was her absolute favourite.

I love it because it's really simple to make.

We start off by cutting from end to end through the stalk.

All the kitchens that I cooked in tended to be domestic kitchens.

The kitchen at Highgrove was a lovely country house kitchen,

really, with an Aga, of course,

and then we also used to go up to Balmoral,

and again, that was just a lovely country home.

Sandringham was the kitchen that was the biggest of all of them.

It was the only stainless steel kitchen that we cooked in.

None of them were fancy, though,

and the family did come into the kitchen quite a lot,

which was lovely, because they were really homely.

Sprinkle a generous amount of olive oil...

So I will just pop it in the oven.

While the aubergine bakes for half an hour,

Carolyn starts a tomato sauce,

using onions, garlic and herbs.

Another component of this stuffed aubergine is some bulgur wheat,

which I'm going to put in with red onion now and get that cooked.

On its own, it's not hugely tasty,

so put some thyme in, a good twist of pepper and a pinch of salt.

Give that a good stir and add in the water.

SIZZLING

I'm going to pop the lid on and leave that to come to the boil.

Next job's to dice up some peppers.

Today, I've got a yellow and a red.

Carolyn's home style cuisine was a real favourite

with the Prince and Princess.

People always assume that the Royal Family

lived on caviar and lobster, but it wasn't like that at all.

Obviously, they had to dine out a lot,

so when they were at home,

they just wanted to eat really nice, simple, homely food.

Prince Charles obviously enjoyed a lot of fresh vegetables

from his garden, and I guess the challenge is in making comfort food

look something really special.

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

I'll season them with a little salt and sugar at the end of cooking,

otherwise they tend to burn a little bit.

I'm just going to pop these on the stove.

The peppers need to saute, while the aubergines come out of the oven.

I'm going to start now by taking the flesh out of the aubergines.

I really enjoyed cooking for Princess Diana,

because I could do some slightly different things.

She didn't always go for the traditional things

that I think the rest of the Royal Family probably always had.

She brought a slightly different perspective,

certainly with food.

I would say things became slightly less formal.

I wouldn't say that something like stuffed aubergine, for example,

was a really typical thing to have on a royal menu,

but it certainly became a regular once she started having it.

So now, I've got all the bits I need to layer this up.

This is the bit where you can really have fun.

Carolyn layers up the bulgur wheat, peppers, sauce,

aubergine and goat's cheese back into the skins.

And after 15 minutes in the oven, her Diana favourite is ready.

There we go, those are baked.

The tomatoes have cooked down a little bit

and the aubergines are looking nice as well.

Now, this is where we have to be very careful.

There we go.

And then we're just going to add a few

of these beautifully coloured little tomatoes.

One more tiny bit just for the top here,

and then that's ready to go.

This is a dish that, although it may be fit for a princess,

it's really fit for anyone.

It's just simple home cooking -

it's nourishing, it's warming,

and I don't think you can do much better than this.

For any chef, working for the Royal Family

is an experience of a lifetime,

especially as some royal consorts take a particular interest

in the kitchens.

This is Darren McGrady who worked as a chef in the Royal kitchens

from 1982 to 1997, that's for the Queen and Prince Philip,

and later, for Princess Diana.

But paint me a picture, Darren,

of what it's like working in the Buckingham Palace kitchen.

It was an amazing experience.

Sometimes, the Queen was on her own,

so it was just a sort of a light lunch,

something like grilled fish and salad

with 300 staff to feed, of course, as well.

But other times, the next day, it could be a state banquet.

And then it was all hands on deck, 20 chefs in the kitchen,

working 17-hour days.

And state of the art?

Oh, gosh, no.

No, the pans were dating back to Queen Victoria.

Antique copper pans.

And the whisks and ladles were too.

They were almost 90 years old.

What about the Queen and her other half, Prince Philip?

Was their attitude to food the same?

No, not really.

The Queen ate to live, rather than lives to eat,

but Prince Philip loves to cook.

Now, the Queen still is interested in what's going on,

especially when she's entertaining,

but Prince Philip, he's the one that loves to be hands-on in the kitchen.

He likes dining out, doesn't he, in the sense of alfresco?

He likes picnics, he likes barbecues...

-He does.

-So what's it like in the kitchen

when he is preparing one of those?

You never really know what's going to happen.

You have something prepared

and he comes in and wants something different.

If there's any game off the estate, any pheasant, partridge,

venison, grouse, then, OK, let's have that,

and then any chocolate, cos the Queen loves chocolate,

then he will choose that too.

You make it sound as if he comes down to the kitchens

kind of raiding them.

At Balmoral, that's pretty much what he does do.

He just goes and chooses what he wants,

and you have to have it ready.

Sometimes, that means chefs running out at seven o'clock at night

and picking berries with torches,

because he's seen during the day some raspberries that look beautiful

and we want them for dinner that night.

And you've cooked for Princess Diana too.

Different generation? Different attitude to food?

She was. When I joined the princess, she said,

"You take care of all the fats

"and I'll take care of the carbs at the gym."

So it was healthy eating for her.

She loved a dish called Egg Suzette,

a baked potato with spinach in the bottom

and then a poached egg and hollandaise sauce over the top.

And a bit of a contradiction to her other half,

Prince Charles, I imagine?

Yes, Prince Charles was into Italian food,

so he liked all the pastas and all of the Italian foods,

like polentas and things.

-You must miss it?

-Well, I do. I miss the state banquets.

You know, there's nothing that makes you more proud

than being on the Royal yacht Britannia,

sailing into Miami, a huge flotilla of boats all around you,

jetting water and honking horns.

The Royal Marines Band up on the top deck

playing A Life On The Ocean Wave.

There are you, in the Royal galley,

preparing a banquet for President Reagan and President Ford.

Royal kings and queens have often treated their consorts

to a specialist confection,

largely thanks to Edward VII,

who persuaded his favourite chocolatier to leave Paris.

Some of the most glamorous royal consorts

have shared a common taste for a rather special type of chocolate.

This box holds three kilos of chocolates.

So it's a lot of chocolate and it will set you back £1,700.

Charbonnel et Walker have been selling luxury chocolates

in the heart of London for over 140 years.

Adam Lee is currently head chocolatier.

Loved by the Queen Mum, Wallis Simpson and Diana,

the company has a close relationship with the Palace.

Without the Royal Family, we wouldn't be here.

That's because back in 1875,

the kind of chocolate that was being produced in the UK

was of a very inferior quality

to what was being produced on the Continent, for example.

At that time, the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII,

was a huge fan of the Parisian style of chocolate making,

and one of his favourite chocolatiers in Paris

was Madame Charbonnel. There we go.

She worked for a company called Maison Boissier,

and he persuaded her to come over to the UK

and to introduce her way of chocolate making

to the UK chocolatiers over here.

So our royal connection goes right back to our very, very beginnings.

They still hand-make their chocolates

to the original 19th-century recipes,

including two very special floral flavours.

The rose and violet creams are a huge favourite

with lots of members of the Royal Family.

There's a lovely anecdote about the late Queen Mother,

who was a huge patron of ours.

It was said that when she was out on official duties,

she would always have in her handbag a few rose and violet creams

that she would sneakily pop every now and again.

It's a lovely story,

and they were indeed one of her favourite chocolates.

And it's not only what's inside the boxes

that makes these chocolates loved by the elite.

Madame Charbonnel was the chocolatier,

but Mrs Walker was the lady who made the packaging

and hat boxes and jewellery boxes.

So they combined their efforts to get to this chocolates and packaging

that beautifully complemented each other.

And we still stick to that today.

Often decorated with silk and crystals,

the company also designed special boxes for royal events.

Though being royal warrant holders, they have to get Palace approval.

So when it comes to product development,

we have to bear in mind, is this product going to

sit well within our range?

Because there are certain rules and regulations

that we have to adhere to to keep our royal warrant.

Though one new truffle flavour should please the Queen.

It does sit beautifully with who we are.

I mean, gin and tonic -

it doesn't get much more English than that, does it?

A sweet tooth seems to run throughout the Royal Family.

That certainly shows in their love of puddings.

The Duke of Edinburgh's favourite - Andrassy Pudding.

All the Royal Family seem to have their favourite dishes, don't they?

Just like the rest of us, I suppose.

Prince Philip's is supposed to be something called Andrassy Pudding?

Yeah, I think that's something to do with a failed chocolate souffle.

Yeah, there's a story to it. There's a story to it.

Count Andrassy was a relative of the Royal Family,

invited to Buckingham Palace before the First World War, I think.

They asked the kitchen to knock him up as souffle,

and the souffle was a disaster.

-Oh, God.

-But the chef managed to cover it up in some way

by frosting it and sticking little bits of chocolate on it

and served it, and it was a sensation.

It was actually a disaster, and yet, somehow, it was a success.

Well, I've actually looked at the recipe,

and straightaway, I could tell that there's just too much flour in it,

so there was no hope from the get-go that it was ever going to work.

It was always going to be a failure.

But today, I'm hoping to make the souffle that should have been.

So let's get cracking.

OK, what do you do first?

OK, so, first I'm going to make the creme pat,

which is butter, cocoa, flour and sugar.

You need to melt them down.

Then I'm going to add some milk to it.

Most souffle recipes have some sort of creme pat in them.

You keep saying creme pat.

-Yes.

-Is that a fancy chef's word for something?

Gosh, is it fancy?

-Does everybody not say creme pat?

-It's not in my household.

Creme pat doesn't reach our lips.

-What does it mean?

-OK, well, it's a bit like pastry cream.

-Yeah.

-So it's like a kind of custardy type thing,

like a little bit flour in it?

But, yeah. Pastry cream is probably the English word for it.

And pat is just short for patissiere, I suppose, is it?

That's right, yeah. Just trying to get this butter to melt down a bit.

-I might turn up the heat.

-Mm-hm.

This is going to be really rich, isn't it? All that butter.

It will, but when you make a souffle,

you should have nearly equal quantities of your flavour base.

Here it's this chocolate creme pat.

It should be equal quantities of that to egg white,,

so that's what makes it kind of beautiful and light

and makes it kind of rise.

Why are souffles considered by amateurs to be high risk?

Well, maybe originally it would have come from the oven

needing to be a special kind of fan-assisted oven,

which we all now have in our houses.

And secondly, I think you need to make sure you get your base right,

you need to make sure your mould is buttered

and it's chilled, and then not to over-whisk your egg whites.

So I think it's all of those things added together

creates basically a Russian roulette dessert for some people.

But if you follow the kind of basic rules, they should work out.

But I'd say chocolate souffle

-is probably the most ambitious of all souffles.

-Why?

Because there's something in chocolate

that seems to make the egg white break down faster

-than other flavours.

-Oh, right.

So souffle is high risk

and the chocolate souffle is extra high risk?

Lots of things to go wrong.

Hopefully, today, none of those things will go wrong.

I'm making the creme pat for the chocolate souffle,

so I've just melted down my cocoa, my butter, sugar, flour,

and I've just added warm milk in on top of that.

And what I need to do is give it a nice little stir,

and once it starts to bubble, that means it's done.

It's very a la minute - once you've made your souffle,

it must go in the oven and bake,

but if you make a strawberry souffle or a cherry souffle...

..they actually could be made a couple of hours in advance

and they could sit in the fridge, if you wanted.

You know, perfect if you were trying to do some, you know,

really special Christmas Day dessert or a dinner party.

Are you nervous?

I am absolutely trying to hide all of my nerves, Michael.

Because right now, I can just feel your eyes on me,

expecting the most perfect chocolate souffle.

Well, exactly. Of course I'm expecting

the most perfect chocolate souffle.

So, this is done now.

It's just starting to bubble.

-Mm-hm.

-You can see it's starting to bubble, and that means it's ready.

So I'm just going to set that aside, because it needs to be chilled,

so I actually have one that I made earlier on.

And you need roughly about equal quantities of your chocolate base

to your egg whites.

I'm going to put 50g of sugar in it with my egg whites,

and what this does is it strengthens the egg white a little bit

so that when you fold it in, it can kind of hold its own

with this bully chocolate that's going on.

You see it in terms of a contest in there, do you, as it mixes up?

Yeah. It needs to be a perfect marriage really.

-OK.

-There's so many things that could go wrong with this.

Stop saying that, Michael, stop saying that.

-No, no, no, I don't want...

-Everything's going to be OK.

Put your trust in me, the professional.

OK, I'm going to lift over my mould,

and you can see that it's been buttered.

-Yeah.

-What's really important is that the butter is not melted,

it's just soft, it's room temperature

and it needs to be good brushstrokes on the way up,

because you're trying to encourage, obviously, this rise.

If you do it the other way, what happens?

Well, it just makes it more difficult.

It just makes for more possibility of it going wrong.

So you are doing everything in your power to make it a success.

-Yeah.

-And this is kind of chocolate gratings or curls.

So you've got the butter in there,

swept upwards and you've got grated chocolate in there too.

-Yeah.

-Wow. Imagine trying to do this by hand.

I know. I think about this all the time.

When this was created, like, it was all done by hand.

It's insane.

You'd have real beefy, prop forward shoulders if you were doing that.

Yeah.

OK, so, this is ready now.

It's really, really puffed up.

Yeah. OK.

Oh, this is the trickiest part.

OK, so now I need to fold in my mix.

-Mm-hm.

-OK, so, first of all. I'm just going to put

a small amount of egg white in with the chocolate

and I'm just going to lighten that up.

OK. Then I'm going to put probably half of this mix in there now.

Why a little bit first and then a bigger bit?

Because we are trying to prevent lumps

and the more similar the mixes are in texture,

the better that they are going to incorporate.

So it's just lightening up that chocolate mix in the beginning,

and especially if it's a bit cold,

-you really need to beat it in a bit more.

-Yeah.

So once this is kind of halfway folded through the second time,

-I'm going to add the rest of it. Oops. Messy.

-Oh, dear.

-Yeah.

Oh, that's rather nice.

Yes, I think you are a bit of a fan of chocolate, Michael?

Yeah, I can eat chocolate, yeah.

I haven't got a sweet tooth, really, though.

HE CHUCKLES

I don't believe that for a second.

No. Still got the veins of white in the chocolate, hasn't it?

That's it. But the whole time, I'm really trying to protect

the air of the souffle.

So you are folding rather than beating?

-Folding. It is all about folding, folding, folding.

-Hmm.

OK, then I'm just going to pour this into the mould.

Prince Philip, this is his favourite dish.

Do you think his favourite is the failure?

Do you think he actually likes the sunken one?

I don't know. Maybe I'll have to call around

and do the souffle for him and see which one he prefers.

OK.

OK, so scrape this off.

Beautiful.

I can't really imagine that the failed one tasted very nice.

I don't know.

I mean, as a kid, I used to like cakes that had failed.

I liked the soggy ones.

-Really?

-I love all that.

Oh, that's so adorable. Imagine Michael a little kid,

eating his failed cakes.

I was very sweet actually.

Now what are you doing?

OK, so I'm just cleaning around the outside, so it doesn't catch,

but I might have to do this twice, because it's such a big mould.

This is much bigger than your average souffle.

So this will take about 30 minutes to cook inside the oven,

but, really, if you had individual portions,

-they'll cook in about six-seven minutes.

-Quicker?

-Oh, my goodness.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because that's one of the things in restaurants.

If you want a souffle, they kind of say,

"Allow 20 minutes or half an hour or something."

That's very often because we will do it a la minute,

just whisk it up when it's ordered.

A la minute?

A la minute. We will just do it at the minute when you order,

so that it's super fresh.

OK, great.

So this goes into the oven, 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

OK, Chef.

OK, right, just get this organised.

It's in, Anna. It's on its way.

Wonderful, great, so we better get cracking on the chocolate sauce.

This is a very simple chocolate sauce.

But it's also very delicious.

I'm just going to add all of the ingredients in together.

I have some golden syrup in the pan now.

I'm going to add chopped chocolate, I'm going to add cocoa powder,

then double cream, of course, I know.

It wouldn't be a delicious chocolate sauce without a load of cream.

You don't have a spasm of guilt over all this?

-Look, there's some healthy stuff going in. Some water.

-That's OK.

So everything else is OK, balances out.

And then a pinch of salt, just give it a good whisk,

bring it up to the boil and then you just have a lovely chocolate sauce.

-And that's it, is it?

-Yes. I mean, it's foolproof.

Around about this stage, all those years ago,

the chef must have realised his souffle was not going to work.

And can you imagine that?

It's a bad moment for you, isn't it?

Can you imagine that you are about to serve a chocolate souffle

-to the Royal Family and it's collapsed?

-Yeah.

Have you had any disasters?

No, Michael, I've never had a disaster. I mean...

HE CHUCKLES

I'm embarrassed to say, but, you know,

I've never made a mistake in my life.

No, I've had a couple of disasters in my time.

Do you disguise them or start again?

I would always start again, yeah.

But, you know, I don't know the situation of that night

with the chocolate. Maybe he had no more chocolate left.

So the sauce is ready now.

Ooh, that's nice and hot.

-This is tricky, isn't it?

-Oh, it is tricky.

You might spill a bit.

That's terrific.

OK, so that's our chocolate sauce ready.

-Mm-hm.

-Moment of truth.

Off to the oven.

Oh!

Ooh-hoo-hoo!

Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo!

I nearly dropped it!

Look at that, a race against time now, eh?

Ow!

Gosh, it looks fantastic, doesn't it?

-It's making a bid for freedom.

-It looks beautiful.

Come on, come on.

I'm pouring the chocolate sauce now into the centre of the souffle,

so you have a beautiful, gooey chocolate delight.

-It's like a volcano!

-I'm going to insist that you go first.

Oh, yes, please.

I'm going to have some of that chocolate sauce.

Oh, lovely!

Mmm! It's so light.

I'm not sure which part I prefer. The souffle or the sauce.

Mmm. They are both wonderful.

Mmm.

Mm!

That's a dish PROPERLY fit for a prince.

And that's it from our programme about the food

enjoyed by royal consorts.

See you next time.

Go on, go on, go on.