Afternoon tea has been a royal tradition since Queen Victoria’s day, and according to former Buckingham Palace chef Darren McGrady, it was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite meal. But stopping for tea, sandwiches and cakes between lunch and dinner isn’t only a civilized, adults-only affair, as McGrady recently told U.K. coffee retailer Coffee Friend.
The former royal chef worked for Princess Diana at Kensington Palace after leaving Queen Elizabeth’s employ, and he said William and Harry had their own teatime rituals. “During the week, Prince William and Prince Harry would be at Ludgrove at school so they wouldn’t be there for tea, it would only be at Easter or Christmas or the summer at Balmoral that they’d get to spend time with the rest of the Royal family at afternoon tea,” he shared.
However, William and Harry would get their own special food for tea, and McGrady revealed that he’d put in some extra sugary treats that drove their nanny “crazy.”
“A lot of the time we would actually send nursery tea separately, so the boys wouldn’t have tea with the Royal Family,” he shared. “We’d do caramel banana cake, lots of sugar, it used to drive nanny crazy, and jam tarts—traditional, authentic, British nursery food.”
As for the adults, Queen Elizabeth would review what she was going to eat each day in a special “red leather-bound book” called a “Menu Royale.”
“For afternoon tea, the chefs would suggest sandwiches and scones—we didn’t tell the [late] Queen what she was having because we knew what a lot of her favorites were, but the other cakes, the small cakes, changed every single day,” McGrady shared.
He admitted that “occasionally” the late Queen “would put a line through something” she didn't care to eat or make special requests. “If she had said Prince William was coming for afternoon tea, she knew her grandson loved chocolate biscuit cake, so she’d write that in instead and put a number two,” he explained. “That told us there were two for tea.”
