The King’s Dinner
Family, nation, and identity on the British table, 1760-1820
Adam Crymble (Author), Sarah Fox (Author), Rachel Rich (Author), Lisa Smith (Author)
The King’s Dinner is about what it meant to be British at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on the vast kitchen ledgers of two royal households made newly available to research through digitisation, the authors study the role and influence of food in understanding British identity. Analysing trade routes, migration, agricultural changes, recipes, and flavours they argue that Britishness was more complex and more multicultural than previously recognised.
Starting at George III’s Kew Palace and the Prince Regent’s Carlton House, then moving in ever wider circles, the book considers the significance of food for understanding the royal family, the wider British population, their European neighbours, and the British and colonised people in the Atlantic world and the Indian subcontinent. With a growing overseas empire, Britain was an increasingly powerful nation, and the ability to choose was one of the ways this power was exercised. The cuisine that emerged was complex, with wealthy Britons adopting, adapting, or rejecting the foods of European enemies and allies or colonised peoples and places. ‘Britishness’ was an ever-shifting balance of European multiculturalism, imperial ambition, tradition and experimentation, a messy mix that reveals the entanglement of cultures and cuisines, continually changed by the people who cook and eat the food.
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Cast of characters and key diners
Introduction
Part I: Feeding the palaces
1 Provisioning the royal households
2 Feeding the palace
Part II: European presences
3 German migrants, royal dinners
4 French gastronomy at the heart of the British nation
Part III: Selectively tasting the empire
5 Caribbean commodities and rejecting a taste for the tropics
6 Indian flavours and Britishness in transition
7 British food in a multiethnic kingdom
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806550869
Number of illustrations: 28
Publication date: 11 June 2026
PDF ISBN: 9781806550869
EPUB ISBN: 9781806550876
Hardback ISBN: 9781806550845
Paperback ISBN: 9781806550852
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The King’s Dinner
Family, nation, and identity on the British table, 1760-1820
The King’s Dinner is about what it meant to be British at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on the vast kitchen ledgers of two royal households made newly available to research through digitisation, the authors study the role and influence of food in understanding British identity. Analysing trade routes, migration, agricultural changes, recipes, and flavours they argue that Britishness was more complex and more multicultural than previously recognised.
Starting at George III’s Kew Palace and the Prince Regent’s Carlton House, then moving in ever wider circles, the book considers the significance of food for understanding the royal family, the wider British population, their European neighbours, and the British and colonised people in the Atlantic world and the Indian subcontinent. With a growing overseas empire, Britain was an increasingly powerful nation, and the ability to choose was one of the ways this power was exercised. The cuisine that emerged was complex, with wealthy Britons adopting, adapting, or rejecting the foods of European enemies and allies or colonised peoples and places. ‘Britishness’ was an ever-shifting balance of European multiculturalism, imperial ambition, tradition and experimentation, a messy mix that reveals the entanglement of cultures and cuisines, continually changed by the people who cook and eat the food.