Eating with Emperors
150 Years of Dining with Emperors, Kings, Queens . . . and the Occasional Maharajah
Eating with Emperors takes a peek inside the kitchens of the world's leaders and looks at how cooking for our heads of state has changed over the past 150 years.
Opinion
'This book is a highly entertaining and informative tour of many royal houses of Europe, and particularly of the unstinted opulence of their kitchens.'
-- Noel Shaw, Launceston Examiner, 10/10/09
About this Title
The world jeered when the Emperor of Iran served roast peacock to celebrate the anniversary of his Empire; guests gasped in delight when Queen Victoria kicked off Christmas Day with a whole stuffed wild boar's head; and the White House chef resigned when he was asked to cook with frozen vegetables.
The last Tsar of Russia had his fish served as fresh as can be from the marble aquariums kept in the imperial kitchen; the German Kaiser would shoot his own pheasants at one of his sixty-nine palaces; and the King of Bulgaria liked his guests to be accompanied by handsome young male equerries for the King's after dinner 'entertainment'.
Menus at the Buckingham Palace dinner table are written in French instead of the Queen's English; while the husband of the Queen of Denmark let slip he enjoys eating dog meat, saying it tastes 'like the veal of a baby suckling calf, only drier'.
Princess Diana had a fondness for lobster quiche; Hitler was essentially vegetarian; and Mussolini continued to serve wine at his table in the middle of World War II despite imposing food rationing on the rest of Italy.
These are just some of the tales of cooking for our world leaders. Based on original menu cards from the tables of Emperors, Kings, Queens, Presidents, Princes and the occasional Maharajah, Eating with Emperors takes a peek inside the kitchens of the world's leaders and looks at how cooking for our heads of state has changed over the past 150 years.
About the Author
Apart from a brief period working for the Queensland government to promote gourmet food and new food-technologies, Jake has spent most of his working life as a media or political adviser to the conservative parties in the corridors of Queensland's Parliament House and is currently Principal Adviser to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Lawrence Springborg.
It is his twin love of food and politics that has driven him to research each menu, to find out who a world leader was entertaining and why. In doing so he has discovered what exactly you serve someone for dinner when you have just informed them you're pondering dropping a nuclear bomb on their doorstep.
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