What The Royal Family Really Eat: 20 Recipes From Inside The Palace

Before his death at the age of 99 in April 2021, Prince Phillip lived a life full of love, service, and good food. In fact, Hello! reported that the late Queen’s husband often cooked meals for the family and was a guru with the grill. But there was one particular meal he loved above all others. And that delicacy, according to ex-Royal Family chef Darren McGrady, was salmon coulibiac.

McGrady spoke to the Delish website about how Phillip loved tucking into his favorite dish, which originated in the wealthier echelons of Russian and French society. Salmon coulibiac’s essentially a delicious pastry filled with the pink fish and a host of vegetables and spices. A recipe from A Spicy Perspective includes rice, diced mushrooms, spinach, white wine, shallots, and dill. Mmm.

Before Meghan Markle became the Duchess of Sussex and was merely a talented actress on Suits, she acquired a taste for something very moreish. What we’re referring to here is poutine. It’s a Canadian delicacy that may not be too healthy but is certainly delicious. And Markle didn’t just tuck into this hearty dish, she learned how to make it perfectly and serve it up.

So, what’s Markle’s recipe? Well, to make her poutine dish you need French fries, gravy, and some cheese curds. And Markle knows exactly how it should taste. “It’s got to squeak when you bite into it. Really,” she told Delish. “The cheese curds should make a squeaking noise when you bite into them or squeeze them. That’s how you know you’ve got the right kind.” Remember, though: no mozzarella!

The late Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son and a long way from the throne, Prince Edward is probably the least well-known of her four children. But still, there are a few things that are recognized about the Earl of Wessex. And one of these tidbits relates to his favorite food. The Sunday Post claims that Edward’s partial to what the prince has labeled “Balmoral Butties.”

So, what on earth are they, you ask? Well, “Balmoral Butties” – the name comes from Elizabeth II’s country retreat – are essentially what most Americans call a bacon sandwich. To make one, you’ll need around three rashers of bacon, some fresh white bread – sliced or as a roll – and some butter. Fry the bacon, butter the bread, squeeze on some brown sauce, mayo, or ketchup, and hey presto, you have a meal fit for an Earl. Just remember to make a cup of tea as well!

To mark Her Majesty the Queen’s 94th birthday, the royal pastry chefs took to Twitter to reveal what she’d be eating to celebrate. It turned out that she had this beautiful array of petite iced chocolate cupcakes. Though with their regal and colorful icing, they almost looked too pretty to eat!

As the chefs revealed, to make these cupcakes you’ll need to combine 9 ounces of self-raising flour, 10.5 ounces of caster sugar, 2.5 ounces of cocoa powder, and 0.35 ounces of baking soda into a mixing bowl. Then whisk two eggs in a separate jug, along with 5ml of vanilla essence, 3.5 ounces of melted butter, some oil, 1.25 cups of milk, and 0.5 ounces of vinegar. Finally, oven-bake them for a quarter of an hour before topping each one with carefully cut royal icing.

Kate Middleton’s known the world over for her elegance and svelte figure. And it appears that the latter’s at least in part down to her good diet. For instance, Kate is known to mostly avoid meat-based dishes at lunchtime, as chef Raghu Deora revealed when she and Prince William visited the Taj Mahal. When the royal pair ate there, he revealed it was “all vegetarian, because I was told that was what they preferred.”

One of the dishes William and Kate tucked into that day was a lentil curry. This is believed to be a favorite of Will’s better half, due to its low fat content and satisfying taste. Kate’s favorite Indian dish is made with potatoes, peas, spinach, black lentils, and cauliflower. But the royal couple did also tell BBC Radio 1 that William isn’t as into spices as his wife.

King Charles III is well known for his commitment to organic farming and produce. Former royal chef Carolyn Robb revealed in her book The Royal Touch that Charles used to come out with her to forage for food in the royal grounds. She also wrote that Charles’ “knowledge of wild foods is extensive” and that she learned “many fascinating things from him on these wonderful outings.” Such devotion to healthy living is illustrated by his longstanding love of the aptly named lovage soup, which Charles has enjoyed since childhood.

So, what exactly does this dish consist of? Well, the website Nourished Kitchen’s listed a recipe that’s likely close to the royal one. It obviously includes the lovage plant that grows on the royal estates. Add 1 ounce of that herb, finely chopped, to a pot. Mix in two tablespoons of butter, a bunch of chopped and peeled green and yellow onions, two quarts of chicken stock, three peeled and sliced medium russet potatoes, and finally add some heavy cream. Heat it, sprinkle on salt or pepper and serve.

Imagine spending Christmas with the Royal Family for a moment. We can only dream of the elaborate decorations, the weird and wonderful family traditions, and the lavish festive feast you’d get to enjoy. Luckily, chef Darren McGrady has shared what the royals eat during the holiday.

One of the favorite dishes on the Royal Family's festive menu is shredded brussels sprouts with onions and bacon. Want the recipe? McGrady explained to Reader’s Digest, “Sauté the bacon until it starts to crisp in a sauté pan.” Then add in sliced sprouts, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil before sautéing the mix on the stove for five minutes until the sprouts and onions are soft. Finally, “Transfer to a serving dish and pour over the lemon juice just before serving.” Yum.

The late Queen Elizabeth’s only daughter, Anne, is known for her reserved nature. As a result, few details of her private life are known, including her taste in food. The Princess Royal did once send a gracious letter to an old Yorkshire kippers company that suggested that the oily fish were something she enjoys. But there is another slightly unusual food that Anne likes.

As weird as it may sound to most of us, the Princess Royal has a taste for bananas that are so ripe they’re almost entirely black. Former royal chef Darren McGrady told TODAY, “She almost always preferred the bananas almost black — overripe — because they digested easier.” Well, we’re not sure you’ll need a recipe for this one. Just leave your bananas to go bad and voila, you have Anne’s blackened fruit!

Kate Middleton somehow manages to always look elegant, healthy, and glowing. Honestly, how does she do it? We imagine she probably has a little more help than the rest of us given that she’s in the royal family, but there must be something she’s not telling us. Well, apparently, Kate has a strange secret for her famously fresh complexion: spirulina.

What the heck is spirulina, we hear you ask? It’s a green water algae, obviously. Marie Claire reports that Kate consumes it regularly at breakfast as part of her routine. It’s been labeled a “miracle food,” and Kate drops the nutrient-rich algae into her blueberry, coriander, kale, and spinach smoothies to boost her energy levels. So why not make one yourself and see if it works?

During her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II liked to start the day in the right way: with a good breakfast. After having berries and cereal, she liked to move onto smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. And it was important to her that the eggs were brown ones. The dish was a favorite of her mother’s, too; celebrity chef Steven Saunders told Euro Weekly News that he cooked it for her 80th birthday back in 1980.

Saunders explained how to make the dish fit for a queen. Toast some wholemeal bread and smother in butter. Then melt some butter in a pan, adding the eggs and stirring gently to separate the yolks. Turn the hob off, put on a lid for a few minutes, then season and put on the salmon. Wash it down with a cup of Earl Grey tea and voila, you’ve got a splendid breakfast.

Decades after her untimely death in 1997, Princess Diana is still missed by millions worldwide. Her down-to-earth nature really chimed with the public, and this was also reflected in some of her food choices. Princess Di was a big fan of bread and butter pudding, a very humble British dessert. Ex-royal chef Darren McGrady revealed that she used to go into the royal kitchen while he was cooking it and would pick raisins off the top as they talked.

So, how do you go about making the bread and butter pudding Princess Diana once described as “the best in the world?” Well, you’ll need raisins, a quarter of a cup of Amaretto, 12 slices of white bread with their crusts removed, nine egg yolks, some vanilla paste, half a cup of milk, toasted almonds, and some sugar. Then follow McGrady’s precise instructions in his book and you’ll have Lady Di’s delectable dessert.

Much like his grandma, Prince Harry’s always had a sweet tooth. As a kid, Charles and Diana’s youngest son would occasionally go into the kitchens and request a golden treacle tart from the chefs. Ex-Royal cook Carolyn Robb also revealed to The Sunday Times that Harry once brought a message from Princess Di that read “Mummy said it’s ok!” after Robb had said it was best to check and ask his mother if he could have the sugary treat.

And now, years later, the precise recipe for Harry’s favorite treat has been revealed. If you already have the shortcrust pastry to hand, then you’ll need the following for the filling: 14 ounces of golden syrup, 5 ounces of fresh white breadcrumbs, zest and freshly squeezed juice from one whole lemon, and 1 fluid ounce of double cream. Next, heat the golden syrup in a pan, without boiling. Turn off the hob, add breadcrumbs and grate the lemon zest in. Allow it to sit, before filling the pastry with the treacle. Finally, oven-bake for a quarter of an hour, cool, and enjoy!

When it came to food, the late Queen Elizabeth had quite an adventurous palate. Her Majesty didn't just stick to the British classics like fish and chips or roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. Elizabeth II also had a deep love for a Caribbean dish called callaloo. But what is it, and how do you make it?

The answer isn’t straightforward, as Callaloo can have numerous different ingredients and be served both as a stew or a soup. The main component, though, is the nutritious green leaves sometimes referred to as Chinese spinach. A recipe shared in The Guardian begins with bacon or salt pork being fried in a large pot. When it’s browned, the callaloo’s then added, along with salt, thyme, onion, and chili pepper. The mixture’s fried for a minute while stirring. Next, a stock’s thrown in and is simmered for 20 minutes. Finally, the crab meat’s put in and stirred, then the dish can be cooled off and served up.

One of the late Queen’s private chefs, Darren McGrady, told HELLO!, “For a first course, [Queen Elizabeth] loved the Gleneagles pâté, which is smoked salmon, trout, and mackerel. She loved using ingredients off the estate, and so if we had salmon from Balmoral from the River Dee, she’d have that; it was one of her favorites.”

But what exactly goes into a pâté fit for a queen? McGrady shared his recipe with HELLO!, and to recreate it you’ll need 1 pound of smoked trout, 2 pounds of smoked salmon, six sticks of unsalted butter, a tablespoon each of dill, chives, and lemon juice, plus 1 pound of smoked mackerel.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle excitedly announced their engagement to the world in November 2017. And during that video, the now Duchess of Sussex spilled the beans on what had been happening when Harry had got down on one knee. They were in Nottingham Cottage, and she was roasting a chicken before the “amazing surprise” of his proposal. And she was following a recipe by American celebrity chef Ina Garten.

The recipe from Garten actually became linked to numerous engagements in the 1980s and so later took on the name “engagement chicken” during the Noughties. To make it yourself you’ll need one whole chicken to roast, a couple of Spanish onions, some salt and ground black pepper, a head of garlic, olive oil, and two lemons. Plus 4 fluid ounces apiece of chicken stock and dry white wine, as well as a tablespoon of plain flour. Follow Garten’s step-by-step cooking guide, and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky!

The late Queen Elizabeth had a real sweet tooth. And way back in 1959, when the British monarch welcomed then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, she made sure that the kitchen served up a tasty treat for her guest and his wife. The delicacy in question was drop scones. Eisenhower and Mamie were so taken by them, in fact, that the couple asked for the recipe! And the National Archives have maintained Eisenhower’s copy.

So, the ingredients to make 16 delicious drop scones are as follows: four teacups of flour, four tablespoons of castor sugar, two of both baking soda and melted butter, and three of cream of tartar. Plus a couple of teacups of milk and two whole eggs. The recipe then directs the baker to “beat [the] eggs, sugar, and about half the milk together, add flour and mix well together adding the remainder of milk as required, also [baking soda] and cream of tartar, fold in the melted butter.”

Prince William and Kate Middleton are one of the most famous couples in the world. The pair first met while attending Scotland’s prestigious St Andrews University. And in late 2020 William disclosed a secret ingredient to a meal he’d cooked for Kate to win her over. The information came out as part of a food book entitled A Taste of Home.

So, how do you go about making the prince’s seductive dish? Well, essentially you need to cook a regular spaghetti Bolognese dish (also known as ragu), with some celery and carrot added. And then drop in the secret ingredient that may or may not help you woo a love interest: dry white wine and nutmeg. Apparently, they help the flavors of the minced beef and veggies to come out fully. It worked for Will, anyway!

Kate Middleton faced a serious dilemma when she first joined the Royal Family: what do you buy the Queen of England as a gift? She admitted to Radio Times in 2016, “I can remember being at Sandringham, for the first time, at Christmas. And I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present. I was thinking, ‘Gosh, what should I give her?’ I thought, ‘I’ll make her something.’’ Kate admitted that this idea “could have gone horribly wrong,” but then revealed that she decided “to make [her] granny’s recipe of chutney.”

The duchess continued, “I was slightly worried about it, but I noticed the next day that it was on the table.” Apparently, then, Queen Elizabeth really loved the chutney, the contents of which were revealed in the cookbook of Kate’s younger sister, Pippa. To make it, you’ll need large marrows, along with some onions, sultanas or raisins, stoned dates, malt vinegar, salt, and soft brown sugar. Heat moderately for a couple of hours, allow to cool, and throw in a teaspoon of salt and a couple of teaspoons a piece of ground ginger and pickling spices, and voila!

To mark the British Cheese Weekender in 2020, Clarence House released a fascinating bit of information about Charles: his go-to brunch meal. And in our opinion, it’s a cheesy, delicious dish fit for a king. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you Charles’ cheesy baked eggs.

The instructions on how to make this yummy-sounding dish are as follows. Butter a small ovenproof dish and coat it with spinach. Then put in chopped sun-dried tomatoes or quartered cherry tomatoes. Dot soft cheese around the dish among the tomatoes. Add torn basil leaves and perhaps charcuterie, then put in some salt and pepper. Crack an egg over the spinach and pour on double cream while ensuring the yolk doesn’t break. Put on a dash of grated hard cheese and place in a hot oven for around ten minutes. Then enjoy a royally delicious brunch!

It’s no secret that the late Queen Elizabeth was a chocoholic. And apparently, one of her sweet treats of choice was a chocolate biscuit cake, which she loved to devour during high tea at Buckingham Palace. “The royal chefs [sent] a whole cake up to Her Majesty every day for tea,” a former royal cook explained. “She [would] sometimes take a slice and then it [was] never seen at the royal table again.” It’s one of Prince William’s favorite snacks, too.

So, how does one go about making this delicious cake beloved by the royal family? According to Darren McGrady’s royal recipe, you’ll need 8 ounces of rich tea biscuits (or any sweet cookie, as British rich tea biscuits are not easy to find in America), plus 4 ounces each of unsalted butter, granulated sugar, and the Queen’s favorite dark chocolate. You’ll then need another 8 ounces of that choc for coating and icing. Does it sound indulgent enough for a royal treat?