From William and Kate’s wedding menu to ten-course royal feasts: TOM PARKER BOWLES uses ten historical palace menus to explain how royal tastes have changed

As train lunches go, it takes a while. Starting with a pile of caviar, the menu continues with trout, lamb, chicken and partridge, asparagus and cheese soufflé, before ending with some serious puddings. It’s certainly better than a Greggs sausage roll.

But this was no ordinary lunch, but rather a banquet served for Edward VII on board a train from Paris to Cherbourg on May 4, 1903. And one of ten royal menus that were about to be auctioned at Drouot Auctioneers in Paris.

They range from a dinner for Queen Victoria at Balmoral in October 1885 to the dinner served after the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011. And they make fascinating reading, an insight into more than a century of royal food.

“Good digestion was essential in those days,” noted Gabriel Tschumi, a chef who started under Victoria and ended his career as Royal Chef to Queen Mary, “when every meal was equivalent to a modern-day banquet.”

Take that dinner at Balmoral, on October 20, 1885. The menu was highly seasonal, just as royal menus were and still are. They were written in French (ditto) and filled with the fruits of the royal estates. Soups, fish, sweetbread croquettes, roast poultry and beef, savory dishes and puddings. A marathon, instead of a sprint.

Buckingham Palace 1981: Charles and Diana’s wedding guests feast on egg-shaped poached brill mousse served in a lobster sauce, followed by boneless chicken with crispy skin, broad beans in butter, sweet corn cream, new potatoes and salad. Dessert consisted of strawberries and clotted cream.

Queen Victoria 1885: Dinner at Balmoral began with veal’s head pie, trout and turbot in breadcrumbs, followed by veal sweetbread croquettes, venison chops, fattened chicken in a salt crust and roast beef. The main course consisted of pheasant and chicken, with fried jacket potatoes. Dessert was a ginger soufflé and almond tart filled with vanilla and orange blossom cream. For those who still had room, there was a side table with cold cuts, including tongue and beef

Buckingham Palace April 2011: William and Catherine chose a very British menu with dishes from all corners of the country, including a tasteful nod to the bride’s Berkshire roots with William’s favorite chocolate parfait

Buckingham Palace menu 1911: George V’s guests started lunch with a meat broth, followed by lobster cutlets. Next came cold chicken in jelly, Russian-style quail with apples, lamb chops, chicken and tongue in aspic, and ham with mushrooms, sausage and truffle. Plover eggs, rolls and sandwiches followed. For dessert there was champagne fruit jelly, chocolate mousse, pastries and baskets of sweets.

Windsor Castle 2008: Served for French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ex-supermodel wife Carla Bruni, fillet of brill was followed by a main course of lamb medallion with artichokes and broad beans, cauliflower in Hollandaise sauce, carrots with tarragon, thinly sliced ​​potatoes and salad. Dessert was rhubarb cake with vanilla cream and fruit. Note the quality of wines: Margaux 1961, currently on sale for £2,340, and a magnum Krug 1982, now £3,950.

The White House 2007: President George W. Bush hosted a dinner for Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The first was pea and lavender soup with chive waffles topped with American sturgeon caviar. Then tongue was fried in butter on gold-rimmed plates, followed by lamb in chanterelle mushroom sauce and baby vegetables. A salad of arugula, savannah mustard leaves and fresh ‘mint romaine’ lettuce was served with a champagne dressing. After a cheese dish, the guests were served sweet ‘rose blossom’ sweets.

Victoria’s son, Edward VII, was one of the greatest trenchmen in history. As one biographer rightly noted, “He never played with his food.” The more cream, cognac and foie gras, the better.

His son, George V, was a naval man and his tastes were more sober. Although official royal lunches and dinners consisted largely of high church French cuisine (as seen on the Buckingham Palace menu on May 9, 1911), at home he preferred British comfort food – schnitzels, roasts and cottage pie – or to curries, which he adored.

Perhaps the last truly great old-fashioned banquet was that of April 1914, three months before the start of the First World War, organized by the French government for the king and queen to ‘consolidate the entente cordiale’. Starting with turtle soup there were 18 dishes including foie gras, Bresse chicken with truffles and a Veuve Clicquot champagne sorbet.

But when the constraints of war hit hard, King George and Queen Mary were determined to set an example for their subjects. Alcohol was banned, much to the horror of the household, breakfast was reduced from ten to two courses, lunch was reduced to three courses and meat was served no more than three times a week. This was the beginning of the end of the great royal celebrations.

George VI was also a man who preferred the plains, although his wife, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), certainly appreciated good food. But the soft power of the state banquet is as important as ever. And these menus are an elegant reminder of ‘Soufflé diplomacy’ at its best.

• Tom’s book, Cooking And The Crown: Royal Recipes From Queen Victoria To King Charles III, will be published later this year.