To crown it all, will the King eat turtle soup?

Coronation chicken. (Photo: istockphoto.com/bhofack2)

By Lin Sampson

28 Oct 2022

Now that Charles is King and measuring up the curtains for his new role, what will the food be like? We all know that the queen liked plain food, no garlic.

Eating at the palace, said a frequent visitor, “is not much different from supper in an NHS ICU ward”. And added, “And there are fake logs in the fireplace.”

The thing about King Charles is that he really understands nutrition and is in the happy position of getting wonderful things like wild boar, fresh laid organic eggs, oysters, whole wheels of Stilton, and boxes of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates, although it is rumoured that he dislikes chocolate. Plus meat and milk and cheese that is not chemically enhanced. This is partly the reason why, at 75, he is still as spry as a sparrow. Pity about that male balding gene that shadows all the men in the royal line.

When I lived in Notting Hill Gate, I used to buy meat from a butcher in Ladbroke Grove where the meat came from Charles’ private house, Highgrove; it was creamy as butter with a delicious slightly untamed under taste.

He also opened a company called Duchy Original. I could live on Duchy oat biscuits, which cost more money than a new air conditioning unit.

But, as King, will Charles even be allowed to bring home what his father once called “bloody organics” (Charles had a habit of arriving at Buckingham Palace with his own hamper of organic food)? Or will he have to go the Turtle Soup, Grilled Sole route?

When I first heard about Turtle Soup I tingled with excitement, imagining varnished scales, dark under-ocean tastes, wild unearthly flavours. Did they boil a whole turtle? It turned out to taste like bath water and was the colour of kimchi.

We all know that King Charles is a bit of an orthorexic, ripping into the Balmoral forests to look for wild mushrooms for a risotto, hunting down hare and rabbits; only eating his own farmyard chicks and a couple of residential deer. Sadly now there is a cost of living crises in Britain; the royal family who believe they are poor will probably turn to an old favourite, Marmite, to my mind another fairly revolting spread, but adored by British uppers.

However, the culinary life of most toffs revolves around boiled eggs which is one way of really rattling the staff. A soft boiled egg can be too hard, it can be too soft. It can be not soft enough, etc. It can be leaky with something that looks like amniotic fluid.

In journalist Jeremy Paxman’s book On Royalty, he references the royal’s weird attitude to the soft boiled egg. He said: “Because his staff were never quite sure whether the egg would be precisely to the satisfactory hardness, a series of eggs was cooked, and laid out in an ascending row of numbers.”

The royals have their favourites. Andrew’s is peach melba and ice cream and mango, something he should never touch again if he wants to live any longer.

Chocolate biscuit cake. (Photo: istockphoto.com/valvirga)

Harry mainlines on a showy choc biscuit cake. Personally I don’t consider anything made out of biscuits to be even eatable. Meghan, who regularly consults a nutritionist, brought a more self-conscious tone to royal food. She ferried the words quinoa and smoothie into the royal domain but they are still regarded with some suspicion.

Au fond royals are suburban eaters, they carry around muesli, something I think should be banned, in Tupperware boxes. Their favourite meal is 4 o’clock tea with at least two types of cake and lots of tiny sandwiches. The queen insists that the crusts be cut off. Garlic is thought of as a crime against humanity.

In South Africa this afternoon tea meal is often wrongly called High Tea; High Tea, if it still exists, is a working class meal, eaten around five with a mish mash of baked beans, fried eggs, different cakes and pots of strong tea. As a child in England our biggest treat was to go home with the cook for high tea: baked beans and ice cream.

I think the origins of High Tea stem from the time miners would come home from the mines and needed something more substantial than cucumber sandwiches. It is now often referred to simply as “tea”.

At Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1952, the food was highly lit because the country had been under a strict rationing regime after World War II. It was a celebration to mark the end of an era of terrible hardship. It also coincided with the first television broadcasts and magazines were rich with ideas for TV-friendly snacks.

Coronation chicken. (Photo: istockphoto.com/bhofack2)

A friend of mine owns a copy of The Coronation Cookbook compiled, I think, in Australia. The highlight is Coronation Chicken, a dish invented by Constance Spry and which showcases vintage Hospital Tray dishes and forms a basis of a lot of meals. See Throwback Thursday: Coronation Chicken.

This dish, fairly dire, is heading towards the Fast Food aisles and I prophesy a rash of Coronation Chicken outlets throughout the world, easy to make, terminally unhealthy, what could go wrong?

I am hoping that King Charles will revert to ancient heartier dishes like Lamprey pie, made from eel-like fish called lampreys, baked in wine and spices and covered with a crust.

Or emulate that old sex pot Henry VIII with swan pie, stuffed boar’s head, roasted songbirds or will it be chia seeds and nut cutlets all the way?

However, at a time when bad luck hums in the background and the country is just recovering from Brexit, Covid and Ukraine and the shambles of a new government, I think it is more likely he will go for Marmite sandwiches and a boiled egg or two. DM/TGIFood

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