Their meals included a much wider variety of dishes and were served in the French style – not entirely unlike a modern buffet, but with guests seated around the table, within arms-reach of the carefully arranged food. Unlike the servants, the ancestrally German King George and German-born Queen Charlotte ate a distinctly European cuisine. Armed with a weighted pulley system that could rotate the spits of beef with minimal supervision, the kitchen staff were freed up for the more important business of the royal table. The calendar system meant that no-one had to spend time thinking about what to feed the servants. The big slabs of beef in particular have become synonymous with ‘British’ cooking in the 18th century, with caricatures of ‘John Bull’ routinely playing upon the motif of roast beef as quintessential Englishness.Īt the royal palaces, however, the roasts served a more practical purpose. Who received which cuts was likely determined by an internal hierarchy, with nothing going to waste.ĭay in and day out, similar volumes of meat turned slowly on the large spits before the kitchen fires. Over the course of the week, they probably ate the better part of a cow, a couple of sheep, a pair of calves and a pig. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though they were never served anything that flew in the air or swam in the sea, the staff were fed well, collectively consuming an average of 110 pounds of meat per day. What did the royal household staff eat? William Pitt ('The British butcher, supplying John Bull with a substitute for bread') by James Gillray, published by Hannah Humphrey hand-coloured etching, published 6 July 1795 NPG D12541 © National Portrait Gallery, London Sprite-icon-accessible-parking sprite-icon-apple-podcasts sprite-icon-arrow-up sprite-icon-audio-description sprite-icon-baby-changing-facilities sprite-icon-british-sign-language sprite-icon-caret sprite-icon-chevron-in-circle sprite-icon-chevron sprite-icon-cross sprite-icon-deezer sprite-icon-disabled-parking sprite-icon-down-block-arrow sprite-icon-download sprite-icon-external Facebook sprite-icon-google-podcasts sprite-icon-hearing-loop sprite-icon-instagram LinkedIn sprite-icon-live-subtitling sprite-icon-medium sprite-icon-menu sprite-icon-minus-in-circle sprite-icon-online-and-in-person sprite-icon-online-event sprite-icon-open-quote sprite-icon-padlock sprite-icon-pause sprite-icon-play sprite-icon-plus-in-circle sprite-icon-podcast-addict sprite-icon-quote sprite-icon-right-arrow sprite-icon-search sprite-icon-soundcloud-blank sprite-icon-soundcloud sprite-icon-spotify sprite-icon-stitcher sprite-icon-subtitles Twitter sprite-icon-up-block-arrow Vimeo sprite-icon-warning sprite-icon-wheelchair-accessible-venue sprite-icon-youtube
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