There’s a super specific way the Royal Family eat this festive treat that once left Prince Philip “nearly choking” at Sandringham.
The Royal Family have their own festive food traditions just like everyone else and after putting on their best winter coats and walking to church on Christmas Day, they return to Sandringham House to enjoy a fabulous-sounding Yuletide spread. Whilst many of us might pile our plates high with the Christmas roast lunch, the royals are said to ensure they save room for a 4pm tea. Former royal chef Darren McGrady previously revealed that mince pies are on the menu and there’s apparently a really specific way the Royal Family eat them.
Getting candid on his YouTube channel last year, Darren - who worked for the royals for fifteen years - shared his own perfected recipe for mince pies. Whilst he admitted much of it is down to your personal preference, including his decision not to add mixed peel, he then showcased how he assembled them for the Royal Family.
After cooking the mince pies, he revealed that he made sure not to seal the lids on top. This was a deliberate choice to allow him to insert a quantity of perfectly piped brandy butter inside that he’d done in advance and popped in the freezer.
“Later in the day, around lunchtime, once the entrée had gone into the dining room, then you can put the pies back in the oven. We had to do that to get them really, really hot,” he claimed, “You saw earlier when I made them that I didn’t put any egg on the lids because I didn’t want them to stick to the mince pies.”
Darren continued, “We take the brandy butter and then just lift it and then put some brandy butter into each one and that brandy butter would just melt into the mincemeat and by the time they got into the royal dining room - oh my goodness - they tasted absolutely gorgeous.”
The former royal chef explained that the finishing touch of the specific way the Royal Family eat mince pies is adding a very precise sprinkling of icing sugar on top, as he’d learnt exactly why you don’t want too much. Darren went on to recall a time when Prince Philip was left “nearly choking” on the puffs of icing sugar.
“We had to be careful how much powdered sugar we put on top of the pies,” he said. “I remember one [time at] Sandringham one Christmas Prince Philip nearly choking because he inhaled the powdered sugar off the top of the mince pie just as he was about to put it into his mouth.”
That seems to have stuck with Darren as a royal food-related memory and in the video he demonstrated the ideal amount of icing sugar he usually puts on top of his mince pies. It’s likely that the Royal Family will be tucking into mince pies again this year as not only are they very popular, but Darren previously revealed how they're part of a royal teatime tradition.
Opening up to the Mail on Sunday in 2017, he shared that during his time working for the Royal Family, around 4pm there “will be Christmas cake, a chocolate yule log, mince pies with brandy butter, scones and more sandwiches” brought in.
So it seems whilst they might have a specific way of eating their mince pies, these are just as much of a festive staple for the Royal Family as they are to many families this time of year.
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