Feast your eyes
Dinner is served. MARION MCMULLEN looks at food fit for a Queen
HOW do you like your sea slugs?
Queen Elizabeth has been served all manner of strange foodstuffs on a plate during her 70-year reign.
Her first official visit to China in 1986 saw her attending a banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Peking and being handed chopsticks to tuck into a dish of slimy sea cucumbers.
She later returned the hospitality by inviting leading members of the government to a banquet aboard the royal yacht Britannia before it headed to Hong Kong.
The Queen apparently keeps her favourite dishes a close secret so she is not served the same meal at every state banquet, but she has made certain choices clear over the years.
There is a ban on shellfish and raw meat and a visit to Italy in 2000 came with the request that garlic, spaghetti and tomato sauces should be scratched from the menu.
Food has always played a big part during the monarch’s reign.
Coronation chicken – cooked pieces of chicken, served cold in a creamy, curried mayonnaise – was invented in 1953 by food writer Constance Spry and chef Rosemary Hume specially for the Queen’s coronation banquet.
This year’s Platinum Jubilee Pudding was unveiled as a lemon swiss roll and amaretti trifle after being chosen from more than 5,000 entries to a nationwide competition.
Royal food was making the headlines back in 1947 when a 9ft-high four-tier wedding cake was baked for the then Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to Prince Philip.
The official wedding cake was made by Mcvitie and Price Ltd and used ingredients given as a wedding gift by Australian Girl Guides as post-war food rationing was still in place. It ended up being called The 10,000 Mile Cake.
The royal couple were also given 11 other wedding cakes as presents and slices of cake and food parcels were later distributed to schoolchildren and institutions.
Princess Elizabeth began her wedding day with a cup of tea while the groom is said to have supped a gin and tonic before heading to the ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
A wedding breakfast was later held at Buckingham Palace with a menu that included Filet de Sole Mountbatten, Perdreau en Casserole and Bombe Glacee Princess Elizabeth. Luckily the couple’s many wedding gifts included a fridge.
The Queen has carried out more than 21,000 engagements over the course of her reign and visited more than 100 countries as monarch.
American presidents including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush have all best china and cutlery to serve up a royal feast.
First Lady Betty Ford wrote about the 1976 state banquet in her memoir The Times Of My Life and said they put up a huge white tent over the Rose Garden close to the White House to host the event.
There was a sudden downpour 90 minutes before the Queen’s dinner and three trees on the grounds were struck by lightning, but fortunately the tent had been fitted with a floor to avoid the danger of chairs and guests sinking into any mud.
The menu included New England lobster, saddle of veal, garden salad
and peach ice cream bombe with fresh raspberries.
Betty wrote: “The Queen was easy to deal with. She was very definite about what she wanted and what she didn’t want. She loves Bob Hope and Telly Savalas – both came, and if I hadn’t kept mixing up Your Highness and Your Majesty (he’s His Highness, she’s Her Majesty) I’d give myself four stars for the way that visit went off.”
George W Bush threw the first white tie and tails event in his sixyear presidency when he held a state banquet for the Queen in 2007.
The dinner began with spring pea soup and was followed by Dover sole almondine, saddle of spring lamb and a trio of farmhouse cheeses. More than 300 white roses were also used to build the decorative centerpieces.
Gourmet food is not always on the menu. Her Majesty’s former pilot Graham Laurie once revealed that the royal family also used to enjoy Fray Bentos pies on flights in the 1990s and the Queen is said to have ordered from local fish and chip shops in Balmoral on special occasions.
Chocolate biscuit cake was recently revealed as one of her food favourites and she is said to enjoy her steak well done.
The Queen’s favourite tipple is a Dubonnet and gin cocktail and she also enjoys a glass of champagne.
Famous names like Bollinger, GH Mumm, Lanson, Krug, Veuve Clicquot, Moet & Chandon and Louis Roederer have been given the royal seal of approval.
Britain’s ruler has eaten from a £500,000 marble dish encrusted with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, but she is just as happy eating fruit out of a plastic yellow Tupperware container.