Did you know that the Queen eats both pudding and dessert? Yep, in a new YouTube video by her former chef Darren McGrady, the monarch explains how the two courses are two very different dishes.
Darren reveals how at Buckingham Palace, her Majesty eats a course of dessert fruit after her pudding, which is what we know to be sweet foods like tarts, mousses and ice cream.
"Sometimes the Queen will miss the pudding course altogether and just have the entrée (main course) and some dessert fruit," he says.
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What we're fascinated by though, is the way in which the Queen and her banquet guests eat fruit. It's not at all how you and I eat it at home.
Darren reveals: "Seeing a pineapple on the table must have been really daunting until you saw how the Queen eats pineapple."
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The palace presents a pineapple in a very flash way
The former royal chef demonstrates how it was prepared – by cutting the top off and removing the flesh in a perfect cylinder shape before cutting it into rings and taking out the centre with a ring cutter. "After that you place it back into the pineapple and put the lid on – this will surprise the guests when they open it up!" The pineapple is then eaten with a dessert knife and fork no less.
As for grapes, they were "cut into little bunches so you could just help yourself to one or two" but apples were a little trickier.
Darren says the Queen and guests would, "Take them, then cut them into little bite-sized pieces while talking. Each of the apples had to have the stalks taken out and then once we'd done that, we had to polish every one." Wow! He adds: "It was almost like cleaning shoes."
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The monarch sometimes passes up on pudding but enjoys her dessert fruit
As you can imagine, the presentation had to be perfect.
The chef explains: "The leaves that we used to decorate the dishes all came from Windsor Castle and they had to be polished by hand, every one, and then cut the perfect size so that they looked and complemented all the fruit on the table."
"The fruit came from the local purveyors, but things like apples when they were in season would come from Sandringham and the peaches would come from Windsor Castle. We always served to the Queen whatever was in season. It's what she liked best."
*Immediately starts to rearrange fruit bowl and pick 'show leaves' from garden…
