Eating biscuits for breakfast: perhaps not a good idea in most households, but at Buckingham Palace it was a morning ritual fit for a Queen. In 2019, royal biographer Katie Nicholl gave an insight into the Queen's daily life when she explained that Her Majesty typically started her day "with a simple cup of tea and biscuits". The specific type of biscuits she used to eat remains a mystery – though in 2020 former royal chef Darren McGrady revealed her absolute favourites to be Chocolate Bath Olivers.
After finishing her tea and biscuits, Katie Nicholl has it that the Queen liked to continue her breakfast by tucking into a bowl of cereal. Relatably, the cereal that the Queen ate is said to have been served from an everyday household receptacle: a humble Tupperware tub. According to Reader's Digest, her favourite brand was nothing fancy; a simple bowl of Kellogg's Special K used to do the trick.
During her Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the Queen famously chatted with Paddington Bear about her penchant for marmalade sandwiches (letting slip that she always kept one in her handbag just in case). Though the sketch was purely a bit of fun, it is true that the Queen used to enjoy marmalade on toast for breakfast; according to Katie Nicholl, she usually took it with her second cup of English Breakfast tea.
In his book Dinner at Buckingham Palace, royal servant Charles Oliver revealed that, ever since the war years, the Queen had a soft spot for a controversial breakfast treat: kippers. The story goes that a young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were wandering Windsor Castle when they noticed a delicious smell coming from the kitchen of the castle's housekeeper. Upon knocking at the door, the sisters were invited in for their first taste of the traditional British breakfast. Oliver says that kippers "remained a favourite with the Queen ever since."
According to Darren McGrady, former chef in the royal kitchens, the Queen liked to indulge in scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on special occasions – with a little grating of truffle over the top for added flavour. However, in typical thrifty style, McGrady added that the Her Majesty was usually “too frugal to ever order fresh truffles”.
Far from being reserved for dinner parties and lavish soirées, cocktails – or rather, one cocktail in particular – was an integral part of the Queen's daily diet. Her Majesty was said to have been partial to a pre-lunch tipple of gin and Dubonnet (a sweet, wine-based apéritif), served with a slice of lemon and lots of ice. Curious as to which gin was Queen Elizabeth's spirit of choice? It's very likely to have been Gordon's, which had a royal warrant.
According to McGrady, the Queen liked to keep things simple at lunchtime, typically opting for light, healthy meals like grilled Dover sole on a bed of wilted spinach, or with a side of courgettes. Though Her Majesty attended hundreds of indulgent banquets over the years, the former royal chef also revealed that she preferred to keep her starch intake to a minimum when lunching alone, avoiding foods like pasta, rice and potatoes.
Not one to change her eating habits regularly, when Dover sole wasn't on the menu, the Queen usually opted for something nutritious and fuss-free, like grilled chicken with salad. McGrady revealed that, while she had her likes and dislikes, Her Majesty wasn't a "foodie"; she simply "ate to live", unlike her husband Prince Philip, who "loved to eat and would stand and talk food all day".
Afternoon tea was a staple of the Queen's royal diet, with Her Majesty sitting down to enjoy one every day without fail. According to Darren McGrady and The Telegraph, the tea consisted of dainty, crustless sandwiches, sweet treats and scones. In a tradition rumoured to have been inspired by Queen Victoria's husband, Albert, who thought it was unlucky to eat coffin-shaped food, only sandwiches with round edges were served.
But just what sort of sandwiches did the Queen used to eat as part of her afternoon tea? Darren McGrady explained that the usual suspects were cucumber, smoked salmon, egg and mayonnaise, or ham and mustard finger sandwiches, as well as jam pennies – tiny raspberry jam sandwiches painstakingly cut into circles the size of an English penny coin.
When dining without company, one of the Queen's favourite first-course meals was Gleneagles pâté: a luxurious blend of smoked salmon, smoked trout and smoked mackerel pâtés. According to the recipe from Darren McGrady's book Eating Royally, the dish was layered onto smoked salmon fillets and served with horseradish crème fraîche and crispy Melba toast.
Referring to Balmoral, Her Majesty's Scottish retreat, Darren McGrady told MarieClaire.com: “The Queen loves to eat any food from the estate – so game birds, pheasants, grouse, partridge – she loves those to be on the menu.” But Balmoral wasn't the only place where meats were sourced for the Queen; she was also known to eat game birds shot on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. The Boxing Day hunt at Sandringham remains an annual tradition for the Royal Family to this day.
Darren McGrady revealed to HELLO! Online that the creamy, saucy dish Gaelic steak was one of the Queen’s favourite meals. His special recipe consisted of a beef or venison fillet in a whiskey and mushroom cream sauce. The magic ingredient? A quarter teaspoon of Marmite.
While many sources cite rare meat as one of the Queen's banned foods, it seems it might be more a matter of preference. Chef Darren McGrady told RecipesPlus: "We couldn't serve meat that was rare, as [the Queen] liked her meat more well done." According to McGrady, this is also how she liked the meat in her Sunday roasts to be served.
We all like a treat every now and again, and the Queen was no different. “She loves chocolate,” Darren McGrady told MarieClaire.com. “That was her favourite, and it has to be dark chocolate. The darker the chocolate, the better.” McGrady also revealed that Her Majesty loved chocolate biscuit cake, saying: "This cake is probably the only one that is sent into the royal dining room again and again until it has all gone. If there is anything left when she has it at Buckingham Palace, it then goes to Windsor Castle so she can finish it there."
When holidaying at Balmoral during the summer, the Queen liked to eat strawberries picked fresh from the gardens. The grounds are filled with raspberry, gooseberry and strawberry bushes, while Sandringham sits on 70 acres of apple orchards, and white peaches are grown in the greenhouses at Windsor Castle.
When in the mood for something a little healthier, mangoes were the Queen's snack of choice. She even had a sixth sense for how many tropical fruits her caterers had in stock at any given time: former Buckingham Palace chef John Higgins told the National Post, “She could tell you how many mangoes were in the fridge at Buckingham Palace”.
After a day of eating and drinking like royalty, there could be no finer nightcap than a glass of Champagne. Her Majesty's cousin, Margaret Rhodes, confirmed that the Queen enjoyed a flute of Champagne nightly before bed – and if her impressive lifespan is anything to go by, it must have worked wonders for her constitution. There's no word on what her preferred label was, though it's likely to have been one of the eight brands with a royal warrant (which included Bollinger, Krug, Lanson and Pol Roger).
It seems that even the Queen herself found it impossible to resist the charms of an occasional takeaway. According to Darren McGrady, when staying at Balmoral, she often asked a footman to pick up a serving of fish and chips from the local chip shop in Ballater. Not only that, but she sometimes dined on fish and chips at Windsor too – the only difference being that it was made on site. McGrady revealed: "Fish fried in all that crispy rich batter was a little bit too much for her; she preferred a more refined fish and chips."
On her many travels around the world, the Queen was never without her favourite snack: Dundee cake, a Scottish fruit cake made with sultanas and almonds. According to The Telegraph, she frequently ate the stodgy treat while flying in her private jet: “Even if she’s on a flight at tea time, out will come a cuppa, a Dundee cake, and some scones and clotted cream.“ And to wash it down with? She always had her favourite Twinings Earl Grey tea (made with Malvern water) on hand.
The Queen’s beloved corgis were also incredibly well fed. They even had their own royal menu which rotated between beef, chicken, lamb and rabbit. Darren McGrady told Hello! Online: "It would be chosen and sent to us in the kitchen every month by Mrs Fennick, who took care of all the dogs at Sandringham."
Now take a look at the most amazing royal banquets in history