Christmas is an important time of year for the Royal Family, but it's also fraught with a plethora of rules and traditions. And when it comes to what the royals eat on Christmas Day, even the family's pets get special treatment.
Queen Elizabeth was known for her love of her corgis, and apparently the royal pets were treated like members of the family during the holiday season. While the Royal Family had a special menu for Christmas dinner, so did the late Queen's corgis, according to former royal chef Darren McGrady.
"We actually also had another menu, which was the royal corgis menu," McGrady told Yahoo U.K.'s "The Royal Story" (via the Daily Mail) of Christmas Dinner at Sandringham. McGrady's revelation is pretty unsurprising, especially as he's previously dished on the food he had to prepare for the Queen's dogs year-round.
"When I worked at the palace, we actually had a royal menu for the dogs," McGrady told Hello! magazine. "It would be chosen and sent to us in the kitchen every month by Mrs. Fennick, who took care of all the dogs at Sandringham."
As for what the Queen's corgis enjoyed to eat, McGrady shared, "One day it would be beef, the next day chicken, the next day lamb, the next day rabbit and it alternated through those days." He continued, "The beef would come in, we would cook it, dice it into really fine pieces and then we did same with the chicken. We'd poach them, and again chop them really, really small to make sure there were no bones so the dogs wouldn't choke."
McGrady also noted that the monarch loved her corgis so much that she "would feed them herself, I think after she'd had her tea."
Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew inherited Queen Elizabeth's corgis upon her death, so the dogs won't have spent Christmas at Sandringham in 2024. It was previously reported that Andrew and Ferguson would be spending the holidays together at their shared home of Royal Lodge in Windsor.
As for what the royals themselves will have eaten for Christmas dinner, former royal butler Grant Harrold told The Sun on behalf of Spin Genie, "A traditional Christmas lunch, with goose, turkey and obviously all of the trimmings."
