Cooking for the Royal Family might sound like quite an intense job for many people, but the royal chefs take everything in their stride. That doesn't mean that there aren't some dishes that they haven't looked forward to making in the past.
One such dish was pancakes and they were faced with making an awful lot of them every Shrove Tuesday. Commonly known as Pancake Day in the UK, Shrove Tuesday's pancake-making is a fun tradition for some, but the Buckingham Palace staff certainly used to face the daunting task of cooking well over 600 pancakes.
The late Queen Elizabeth made sure everyone was included and former royal chef Darren McGrady has recalled how he would "dread" Pancake Day thanks to the sheer scale of the job the kitchens had.
In a piece shared on his website, Darren recalled, "I used to dread Pancake Day in the Buckingham Palace kitchens because staff had to have two pancakes each and with 300 staff to feed as well as the royal table that meant over 650 pancakes Because of so many, the chefs were taught to use 6 pans at a time".
If that behemoth task wasn’t already enough pressure, he was once paid a Pancake Day visit by Queen Elizabeth and her sister, Princess Margaret.
He wrote, "I remember The Queen and Princess Margaret coming into the kitchens one day and watching me make them. I thought they were going to be impressed that I was using 6 pans at once until the Queen said 'Isn’t that cheating flipping them over with a spatula? Aren’t you meant to toss them?'"
"So, nervously I put the spatula down and tossed each one in turn, to a round of applause from both ladies," he explained.
As for how the Queen took her pancakes? She enjoyed a more sophisticated touch than loading it up on sugar or Nutella. The Royal Family's website reveals that their ideal pancake recipe followed the beurre noisette method - which translates to browned butter.
It’s a French technique involving melting down the unsalted butter until the water evaporates and the milk solids turn a golden brown, creating a nutty taste. The toppings are up to personal preference and the website offers some classic ideas including lemon and sugar, jam and cream, or ham, leek and cheese for a savoury twist.
While it's not known if Pancake Day is still such a big celebration for the royals, we know that the Princess of Wales loves to bake with her children. It’s easy to imagine she and Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis might be making up their own pancakes this year.
However getting them perfectly tossed pancakes isn't as simple for Kate as it was for the palace chefs. The Princess has previously spoken about her less-than-successful pancake attempts. In 2023, during a visit to a nursing home on Shrove Tuesday, she got into the spirit and started flipping some pancakes with the chefs there.
It was then that, per HELLO! she was said to have confessed, "I always seem to get my pancakes stuck either in the pan or the ceiling or the floor".
