What The Royal Family Really Eats: Favorite Foods From Inside The Palace

Before Meghan Markle became the Duchess of Sussex, she was merely a talented actress on Suits and had acquired a taste for poutine. “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!

To mark Her Majesty the Queen’s 94th birthday, the royal pastry chefs posted some info on Twitter about how she planned to celebrate the big 9-4. It was an array of petite, iced chocolate cupcakes that Elizabeth II enjoyed – and probably didn't share. Though with their regal and colorful icing, they almost looked too pretty to eat!

When the Prince and Princess of Wales ate at the Taj Mahal, chef Raghu Deora revealed it was “all vegetarian, because [he] 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 Kate’s. The Indian dish is made with potatoes, peas, spinach, black lentils, and cauliflower.

Prince Harry would occasionally go into the kitchens and request a golden treacle tart from the chefs. How do you make it at home? Heat 14 ounces of golden syrup in a pan, without boiling it. Turn off the heat, add 5 ounces of fresh white breadcrumbs, and grate in lemon zest. Allow it to sit before filling the ready-made shortcrust pastry with the treacle. Finally, oven bake for a quarter of an hour, cool, and enjoy!

Princess Diana was a big fan of the humble British dessert bread and butter pudding. As Darren McGrady revealed, the Princess of Wales was fond of entering the royal kitchen when he was cooking it and picking raisins off the top as they talked. And if you want to make the bread and butter pudding Princess Diana described as “the best in the world,” seek out McGrady's cookbook Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen.

In late 2020 the Prince of Wales disclosed the secret to a meal he’d cooked specifically to woo Kate. Essentially, you need to cook a regular spaghetti Bolognese and then drop in the secret ingredients that may or may not help you seduce your 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!

King Charles III has a longstanding love of the aptly named lovage soup. And Nourished Kitchen 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.

Ex-royal family chef Darren McGrady told Delish about how Phillip used to love tucking into salmon coulibiac. The dish originated in the wealthier echelons of Russian and French society. Salmon coulibiac’s essentially a delicious pastry filled with 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.

The Sunday Post claims that Prince Edward is partial to what the prince has labeled “Balmoral Butties.” 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!

Former royal chef Darren McGrady spoke to Reader’s Digest about a dish that was on the royal festive menu: shredded brussels sprouts with onions and bacon. He said, “Sauté the bacon until it starts to crisp in a sauté pan.” The chef then adds sliced sprouts, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil before sautéing the mix on the stove for five minutes so. Then, he instructed, “Transfer to a serving dish and pour over the lemon juice just before serving.” Yum.

The Princess Royal has a taste for blackened bananas. And yes, this means fruit that’s practically started to rot. Darren McGrady, the former royal chef and leaker of their culinary secrets, told TODAY, “She almost always preferred the bananas almost black — overripe — because they digested easier.” 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!

Marie Claire reports that Kate consumes spirulina regularly at breakfast as part of her daily routine. It’s been labeled a “miracle food,” and Kate apparently drops the nutrient-rich, green-water 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?

Celebrity chef Steven Saunders told Euro Weekly News that he cooked smoked salmon with scrambled eggs for Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday. Saunders said he first smothered toasted wholemeal bread in butter. Then he melted some butter in a pan, added the eggs, and stirred gently to separate the yolks. He turned the heat off, put on a lid for a few minutes, then seasoned and put on the salmon.

Queen Elizabeth II had a deep love for a Caribbean dish called callaloo. 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.

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. She was following a recipe by American celebrity chef Ina Garten. So seek out Garten’s step-by-step cooking guide, and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky!

Ex-royal chef Darren McGrady told HELLO!, “For a first course, [Queen Elizabeth II] 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.”

Kate Middleton faced a serious dilemma when she initially entered the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales admitted as much in 2016, telling the Radio Times, “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.’’ Then she revealed that she decided “to make my granny’s recipe of chutney.” It was a hit — and the receipt was disclosed in the cookbook of Kate’s younger sister, Pippa.

As we’ve already established, the Queen has a 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! The National Archives has even maintained Eisenhower’s copy.

To mark the British Cheese Weekender in 2020, Clarence House released the king of England’s go-to brunch meal: cheesy baked eggs. Butter a small ovenproof dish and coat it with spinach. Then put in chopped sundried tomatoes or quartered cherry tomatoes. Dot soft cheese around the dish among the tomatoes. Add torn basil leaves and perhaps charcuterie and season. 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 brunch fit for a king!

Darren McGrady told Hello! that one of Her Majesty’s treats of choice is a chocolate biscuit cake, which she loves to devour during high tea at Buckingham Palace. “The royal chefs send a whole cake up to Her Majesty every day for tea,” he explained. “She will sometimes take a slice and then it is never seen at the royal table again.”

Apparently, the drink Camilla mostly goes for is a cappuccino. Behavior expert Darren Staunton told Marie Claire that this beverage was “a drink best suited to perfectionists who like being in control.” And Camilla certainly seems to be a perfectionist — for years now she’s performed her duties flawlessly. Staunton added, “Cappuccino drinkers are people with highly demanding personalities.”

In 2022 the Prince and Princess of Wales visited the Abergavenny Market in Wales. "I asked William what his favorite [cheese] was and he said he liked a really rare Swiss cheese called Kaltbach," Nicky Hurst from Country Fare Wholefoods and Fine Cheeses later told People. And Hurst was then delighted to be able to surprise the prince with a chunk of his favorite cheese.

Stanton told Marie Claire, “According to reports, [King] Charles favors drinking Darjeeling tea with honey. This signifies someone has a personality that isn’t afraid to take risks in order to get what they want, considering Darjeeling is a spicier, acquired taste. The honey seeks to soften the sometimes… [bitter] tea and is a cover to hide the real taste.”

Queen Elizabeth II was apparently fond of a burger — but not as you traditionally know them. According to former royal chef Darren McGrady, the Queen had hers served with no bun and eaten with a knife and fork. Oh, and instead of tomato ketchup, she preferred a cranberry dressing. This revelation led to Foodhub creating a "Ma'amburger" as a tribute.

You probably already know Meghan Markle’s favorite drink — yep, it’s a smoothie. She’s been associated with them for years now. The duchess absolutely loves healthy food and has constantly sung the praises of fruit and veggies in liquid form. She was doing it even before she was a royal, in fact! Back in 2015 Meghan told The Chalkboard about her favorite berry smoothie. It was, she said, a “Clean Cleanse vanilla shake with blueberries.”

King Charles III would often enjoy a plum plucked from his Highgrove yard. "The instruction was to put two plums and a little juice into the bowl and send it into him for breakfast," Darren McGrady once revealed. "I'd send in two plums and he would take one so it would come back out after breakfast, and I'd put the other plum back into the jar and save it."

If you remember Harry’s “party prince” days, you might have expected his favorite drink to be beer or some other alcoholic beverage. But you’d be wrong! Stanton said, “Reports from a couple of years ago have said Prince Harry used to just enjoy normal white coffee.” Since moving to California, though, Harry apparently has a new drink of choice: juice

The celebrity chef Aldo Zilli has rubbed shoulders with Prince William while they collaborated for the charity Centrepoint. And in 2020 Zilli told the Daily Mail that Prince George's favorite meal is an Italian specialty. "Apparently, his little boy's favorite is spaghetti carbonara, so I'm waiting for the call to go and cook it for him," Zilli said. He added, "If George has my carbonara, he will never have another one, so I need to go and make it, let's get the ball rolling, send me to the palace to cook!"

Kate’s favorite hot drink would appear to be a decaf latte. Talking about her choice, Stanton explained, “The concept of decaf indicates that a person is very controlled and self-aware, since drinking too much coffee can be an issue. Though, by ordering a decaf, this largely alleviates the effects of caffeine, while still getting a similar taste.”

In 2019 Kate Middleton visited the Lavender Primary School, which is run by her charity Place2Be. While there, the Princess of Wales let slip that “Charlotte loves olives” and that they make “cheesy pasta” together. “She was telling us how much her children love cooking and how they cook for her,” Matthew Kleiner-Mann, chief executive of the Ivy Learning Trust, later said. “They made cheesy pasta the other day. One stirs the flour, one puts the milk and butter in.”

Stanton told Marie Claire, “Prince William’s favorite hot beverage has never been revealed; however, he has been spotted drinking several cups of breakfast tea while on engagements. This is a no-fuss, very open-to-suggestions-type drink that isn’t really about the flavor, but rather a goodwill gesture… to build rapport with those… [who] make it.”

In 2013 Camilla revealed a favorite pastime while talking to children at the Godolphin Junior School for the Bring Home the Harvest project. "I tell you what I really like: eating peas straight from the garden," she said. "If you take them straight from their pods they're delicious, really sweet. I take all my grandchildren into the garden and they spend hours and hours eating peas."

Unsurprisingly given that she was the monarch, the Queen was probably the royal family member who had her drinks discussed the most. Her fave is Earl Grey tea, and Stanton said, “Psychological research suggests that people who enjoy Earl Grey tea are linked to class and are mature in their personality.” And that sounds about right!

“Although you’re cooking for 300 staff and kings and presidents, you’re also cooking for a family,” former Palace chef Darren McGrady told the Daily Telegraph in 2013. “For two pensioners, with particular likes and dislikes. You’d never put garlic in the Queen’s menu, for example, or strong onions or paprika, because she hates them.”

The Queen had some firm opinions about her food. She enjoyed sandwiches, especially circular jam ones with the crusts removed. And whenever she had a traditional roast joint of meat, she was always served the end piece, as it was her favorite cut. Plus, she kept the breadsticks served at state banquets to give to her beloved corgi dogs.

The Queen was a little frugal. In fact, she once questioned why a chef had used a whole lemon in her garnish because “surely it could be used again?” This prudence might've dated back to when she was a princess growing up during World War II, as the royal family was expected to ration their food in line with the rest of the U.K.

While the Queen generally adhered to a healthy diet, Prince Philip was more of a cooked-breakfast-and-barbecue type. Allegedly, he even had a frying pan that he took everywhere with him! His favorite meal, according to Darren McGrady, was filet mignon in a creamy mushroom and whisky sauce.

“[King Charles III] liked to have his own food with him,” his one-time personal chef Carolyn Robb told the Daily Mail in 2015 — before Charles became King. “He couldn’t risk going down with a bad stomach when he was so busy.” And this fear of ill health at an inopportune time fed into the reason why shellfish food is banned: royals simply can’t afford to be sick when they have work to do.