Some of the Royal Family’s much-loved treats are things you can easily pick up at a shop, like the late Queen Elizabeth’s beloved Bendicks Bittermints. However, there are others which are homemade and rather intriguing, including the "secret drink" she and her fellow royals would apparently take with them on their travels in the UK and beyond.
Batches of it were made once a month in the palace kitchens and former royal chef Darren McGrady unveiled the recipe on his YouTube channel last year. He explained that they re-used the royals’ empty tonic bottles to store this beverage, which is known as Lemon Refresher.
As you might suspect, it contains lemons but it’s far sharper than your standard lemonade thanks to a few other additions besides fruit and sugar.
"Once a month it was the chef’s job to make a secret drink called Lemon Refresher, a palace recipe and we’d have to bottle it in these empty tonic water bottles," he claimed in the video. "We recycled them and then the Royal Family would travel all over the world, take this Lemon Refresher with them, to Sandringham, Windsor, Balmoral, Holyrood Palace and even on the Royal Yacht Britannia too."
If you’re serious about creating your very own Lemon Refresher at home, Darren shared the entire recipe in his video caption. You’ll need sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, tartaric acid, citric acid, boiling water and then, if you want, Epsom salts.
The former royal chef remarked that salts are a "natural purgative" and he stressed that you don’t have to add them to Lemon Refresher if you don’t want to. Once you’ve whisked everything together, you let it go cold, refrigerate it and then you "need to dilute it" before you drink it.
Although Darren said you can serve Queen Elizabeth’s "secret drink" over ice, he likes it just with cold water. In his view, "it smells amazing, it tastes even better".
He worked for the Royal Family for fifteen years overall but left in 1997, meaning that we have no way of knowing if the royals have continued to enjoy their Lemon Refresher regularly since his time at the palace.
However, if it was so popular back then that the chefs made it every month, it’s at least possible it remains a staple drink. The Epsom salts are a divisive ingredient and even those tempted by the sound of the sharp citrus tones might not be convinced to add them.
Lemon Refresher wasn’t the only must-have beverage served to the late Queen. She was reportedly a big fan of Earl Grey, made with loose leaf tea and with a splash of milk added. King Charles is understood to have a different tea preference, with reports suggesting that His Majesty opts for Darjeeling instead.
Fortnum & Mason describe their Darjeeling tea as the "champagne of teas" which seems very appropriate for a monarch. Meanwhile, last year Luxurious magazine alleged that the Princess of Wales shares Queen Elizabeth’s fondness for Earl Grey, but puts her own sweet twist on it.
According to the publication, Kate likes a bit of honey in her tea and given her passion for beekeeping, it’s possible she uses some from one of the royal hives.
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