Princess Kate is known for being a keen chef and avid foodie, and she’s already passing that gene down to her children, especially Princess Charlotte, who is already developing quite the tastebuds. Meanwhile, Prince William, though he tries, hasn’t got quite as expansive a palate as the other members of his family. In fact, there’s one food that he can’t quite get to grips with, that both his wife and daughter love, that also happens to have quite a royal history, having been a firm favourite of Queen Victoria back in the 1800s, according to NPR.
In June 1887, on the third morning of the celebrations for her Golden Jubilee, the Queen met Abdul Karim for the first time, and their profound, yet unconventional, connection began. A few weeks after they first met, he cooked her “a fine Indian meal: chicken curry, daal, and a fragrant pilau,” according to Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant, the biography written by Shrabani Basu. In a diary entry from August 1887, the Queen apparently wrote: “Had some excellent curry prepared by one of my Indian servants.”
However, she had definitely had curries before, as they had been popular in England since the late Georgian period and curry de poulet had been on the dinner menu at Windsor Castle 40 years before, according to British food historian Annie Gray told NPR. Yet the curries from her youth were very different: much more fruit-heavy and turmeric-forward than an Indian curry, mostly a way to use up leftover meat and vegetables, not regarded as a food for the upper class. This quickly changed, as curry began to be served regularly on her dinner table.
Princess Kate is also a fan of curry
Fast forward 130 years or so, and the women of the British royal family still have a love for spicy food and curries: especially the Princess of Wales. During a pre-tour reception ahead of their visit to India and Bhutan in 2016, Prince William and Princess Kate spoke to model Neelam Gill, whose family is originally from the Punjab. Neelam said that the mother-of-three “told me she loved Indian food, so I told her she’d be fine with the spices”. However, the Prince of Wales shared that he “struggles with the spices”
Read the full article here
