Royal chefs dreaded this annual tradition Queen Elizabeth loved

Queen Elizabeth II meets guests as she attends the Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on May 29, 2019 — (Image credit: Yui Mok/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

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.

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?'"

Queen Elizabeth II attends the Out-Sourcing Inc. Royal Windsor Cup polo match and a carriage driving display in 2021

"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.

Catherine, Princess of Wales, flips a pancake as she visits the Oxford House Nursing Home in 2023

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".

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Jack Slater is not the Last Action Hero, but that's what comes up first when you Google him. Preferring a much more sedentary life, Jack gets his thrills by covering news, entertainment, celebrity, film and culture for woman&home, and other digital publications.

Having written for various print and online publications—ranging from national syndicates to niche magazines—Jack has written about nearly everything there is to write about, covering LGBTQ+ news, celebrity features, TV and film scoops, reviewing the latest theatre shows lighting up London’s West End and the most pressing of SEO based stories.

With contributions from

Emma Shacklock

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