Inside King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Food Habits
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6 hours ago
Tom Parker Bowles' new royal recipe book is out this week
What do King Charles and Queen Camilla have for dinner? You can find out in a brand-new cookbook, created by Camilla’s son, Tom Parker Bowles. Out this week is Cooking & The Crown: Royal Recipes From Queen Victoria to King Charles III, which delves into 200 years of royal history to discover what British monarchs of the past and present liked to eat. This includes a whole host of intel on Charles and Camilla’s diets.
New Cookbook Reveals King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Diets
King Charles has long been a champion of environmental issues, and it seems he practices what he preaches with his diet. In the book Bowles says Charles and Camilla eat ‘simple, healthy and resolutely seasonal food’, made by royal chef Mark Flanagan. The royal pantry is filled with produce grown on the royal estates, including ‘game, beef and lamb’ plus fruit and vegetables like ‘peas, strawberries, raspberries and chard’. Bowles adds: ‘There is no waste at [King Charles’] table.’
He goes on to describe the monarch as ‘a true food hero’, saying: ‘there is no man who knows more about food and farming, from the best of British cheeses, through rare breeds of sheep and cow, to heritage varieties of plum, apple and pear, than the King.’
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Charles apparently doesn’t eat lunch, instead enjoying afternoon tea at around 5pm. In line with tradition, this typically involves ‘macaroons, scones, wafers, biscuits, petit fours, pralines, Chelsea buns, and shortbread, along with bridge rolls, crumpets, poached eggs on toast, potted shrimps and sandwiches’. Camilla, meanwhile, usually opts for a ‘very light lunch’ such as chicken soup or smoked salmon. For dinner, the pair tend to have a ‘laid back’ dinner ‘away from the official pomp and circumstance’.
However, state dinners are as majestic as you’d envisage from royalty. Bowles writes: ‘This is not mere eating, rather a brilliantly choreographed ballet, “souffle” diplomacy at its finest, as kings and queen, princes, potentates and presidents sit down to revel in the eternal power of the shared table.’ Menus are written up in French before being sent to the King and the Queen for approval – and apparently Camilla is a ‘stickler for detail’.
The book also reveals some of the favourite meals of previous royals, including the late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
Cooking & The Crown: Royal Recipes From Queen Victoria to King Charles III by Tom Parker Bowles (Aster, £30) is out 26 September.
