6 surprising food facts about Queen Elizabeth, according to a royal chef – Darren McGrady formerly cooked for her and Princess Diana, and revealed her chocolate habit and spoiling of her corgis
- The queen loves Bendicks Bittermints and Charbonnel et Walker chocolates, insisted on fruits only in season (Royal Ascot marked the start of summer) and kept all her daily menus
- The corgis were first in the dining room at Sandringham Palace and got scones at tea time – when it was forbidden to cut sandwiches into squares or rectangles
Ahead of the celebration, Darren McGrady, a former royal chef who spent 15 years as a chef at Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, re-released his 2007 anecdotal cookbook Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen, which shares little-known details about the royals and their eating habits.
McGrady joined the queen’s staff in 1982 before transferring to Princess Diana’s staff in 1993. He then remained at Kensington Palace until Diana died in August 1997.
So what has he revealed about Queen Elizabeth and her food habits?
The queen had scones with her tea daily – and gave them to her corgis
According to McGrady’s cookbook, scones were part of Queen Elizabeth’s daily tea service during his time at the palace.
“They were served religiously each day, alternating between fruit scones and plain scones,” McGrady wrote. “While the queen insisted on them as part of her tea, I suspect she didn’t actually like scones. I say that because she never, ever ate them.”
