The Foods of Queen of Victoria

Queen Victoria and her loyal attendant, John Brown. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Queen Victoria ate to live and she would savor every bit of what she enjoyed. As queen and empress, she could have anything that she wanted to eat, but she certainly made known what she wanted on her table. For this article, I consulted The Private Life of the Queen by a Member of the Royal Household, anonymously written and published in 1897. 

The Queen's breakfast comes with fish, eggs on toast, or merely boiled, with dry toast and a small selection of fancy bread, are the usual articles put before the Queen at her first meal. 

White soup is a staple in her luncheons and she would have a “tiny slice of boiled chicken, or a cut from the sirloin,” prepared in the royal kitchen at a special fire. A slice of game, which, like the beef for the Queen's use, is cooked apart, form the staple portion of Her Majesty's luncheon.  

The Queen always insisted on being served with what’s in season. For instance, when chestnuts abound, she would be served with every night, although it was apparent that she did not touch them. In fact, it was the Queen’s habit of telling her servants to serve this and that but she would never try even a bit of one that she did not like.

“Quite half of the eatables that appear at the Queen’s table are things that she herself never eats.” All she wanted, after all, was to see these foods and know that she had those.

Despite her disinterest for cold meats, Queen Victoria would instruct her servants to ensure that royal side tables are well-laid with cold viands. Roast sirloin of beef and poultry, thus, found their way on royal luncheons and tables. The Queen was adamant that it should not appear that the royal tables are in lack of anything.

The monarch was fond of sweets and chocolate sponges rank highly among her favorites, as well as “plain sponges, wafers of two or three different shapes, langues de chats, biscuits and drop cakes of all kinds, tablets, petits fours, princess and rice cakes, pralines, almond sweets, and a large quantity of mixed sweets.”

Fruits also found their way on the Queen’s plates. She relished the “perfumed grapes of a clear amber colour” and enjoyed the “glorious pineapples and peaches” that are grown for her. She ate potatoes, in any way they were prepared.

Among the Scotch cuisines, Queen Victoria’s most favorite are haggis and Finnan baddies, delicacies served to her when she visited the homes of some Scottish peers. In her early married life, she would be fine with porridge and bread-and-butter. When traveling incognito with Prince Albert and Lady Churchill, they would stay on small Scotch inns and they would share simple fares, like hotch potch soup.

Queen Victoria was fond of fond of eating  outdoors. One time, “she made a delightful luncheon off warmed-up broth and potatoes she had helped to boil herself on a bitter October morning on the moors above Balmoral, while another time she greatly enjoyed a hot venison pie which the Duchess of Atholl provided for a picnic in the woods that border Loch Ordie.

In my next article, I would detail the drinks that Queen Victoria enjoyed.