Royal dining etiquette revealed: weird banana peeling techniques and more
Updated | By East Coast Radio
We might never fully understand all the traditions, rules and regulations that the Royal family has to abide by but this seems a bit extreme... even for them.
The British Royal Family has kept the public's interest for decades.
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Whether it involves family scandals, tragic deaths or questionable etiquette, we've always been intrigued and curious.
Lucky for us Chef Darren McGrady, who worked as the queen's head chef in Buckingham Palace from 1982 to 1993, recently had an interview with TODAY where he revealed some of the strange dining habits of the Royal family.
Chef McGrady, who now lives in Dallas, also served as a chef for the late Princess Diana and her family from 1993 to 1997 and during all his years as a royal chef, he had learned a great deal about the family's favourite foods and how they would eat them.
Most of us would believe that the manner in which they consumed food could not be that different from how we do, right?
Wrong.
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When Americans refer to desserts it's not the same type of dish as what the British are familiar with. So many people are surprised when they find out that the Royal family usually only enjoys fresh fruit for dessert.
Usually during a banquet, after their pudding course (which would consist of cheeses and other desserts) they would enjoy only four types of fruit and no hands are permitted to touch it!
They [anyone present at the royal banquet] have a dessert knife and fork, a small plate and a finger bowl of water ... which some guests have been known to drink.- Chef Darren McGrady
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The chosen fruits would be apples, pineapples, peaches, grapes and pears.
Now some of these are obviously easier to eat with a knife and fork and you aren't even allowed to peel a banana with your hands.
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McGrady said grapes are generally preferred and most popular seeing as they are the easiest to cut up.
But he went on to explain how exactly they would eat the more difficult fruits like the banana.
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They would start by cutting off both of the ends, slice the peel straight down the middle before opening it up and slice it into rounds.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder as it turns out Princess Anne liked her bananas over ripe, so ripe in fact that they were black!
Pears and pineapples also got special treatment.
The purveyor would bring about 200 for us to choose the ripest by hand then they would slice off the top and eat it with a teaspoon like a boiled egg! Pineapples are hollowed out, sliced and then put back into the pineapple so they can be lifted out with a fork and eaten with a knife and fork.- Chef Darren McGrady
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Finally, to decorate the dessert bowls, leaves were picked in the gardens and each individual leaf was polished by hand before being used as a garnish.
This is a lot of effort to go through for some fruit if you ask us.
But they are just out here living their best lives.
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Main image courtesy of The Royal Family Official Instagram
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