Only one thing rarer to find than the wild, white and ferocious Chillingham cattle, is a menu that offers filet of Chillingham beef: once prized for its lean marbled meat.
Today the protected pure heard - confined to the estates of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland - number about 130: twice the size of 1902 when the future King George V, then the Prince of Wales, hosted this dinner at York Cottage on the Sandringham estates.
Cold slices of roast Chillingham beef were simply served with salads and vegetables.
The Prince of Wales’s father, then reigning as King Edward VII, had famously shot a Chillingham bull in 1872; and had its head mounted facing the entrance at Sandringham House.
In addition to the rare beef, the menu also offered guests a now uncommon vegetable. Alongside teal ducks in Port sauce, there was a serving of stalks of seakale braised in butter. Prepared in the same was as asparagus, the wild coastal growing seakale was a popular vegetable during the Victorian era.
In a classic English end to a meal of that era, a savoury is served as the final course: Toast Norvegienn.
It is almost certain, however, that the Princess of Wales was not in attendance at this dinner given, at 7:35pm, she gave birth at the cottage to Prince George, the future Duke of Kent.
The menu-card is from a collection of papers from Sir Alan Reeve who was Surgeon-Apothecary in Ordinary to the Prince of Wales and was in attendance on the Princess that night.
York Cottage, described by Empress Victoria of Germany as “very small, but most charmingly arranged”, was the family home of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It remained their family home even after the couple became King George V and Queen Mary, as the King did not want to force his widowed mother, Queen Alexandra, out of the sprawling Sandringham House.
The future King Edward VIII was not so charitable about his childhood home. “Until you have seen York Cottage”, he explained to a biographer, “you will never understand my father. It was and remains a glum little villa. It is almost incredible that the heir to so vast a heritage lived in this horrible little house.”
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inner hosted by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at York Cottage, Sandringham.
Menu dated 2oth December 1902
Menu
Consommé de Faisan aux profitrolles
Pheasant consommé garnished with profiteroles stuffed with pheasant mousse
Petites soles en Water Souchel
Small whole soles simmered in salted water with parsley and dressed in the reduced cooking stock after it has been lightly sweetened
Faux Filet de Bœuf de chillingham froid
Cold dish of sirloin steaks from the rare Chillingham heard (wild white cattle from the estates of Chillingham Castle, Northumberland)
Legumes & Salade
Vegetables and Salad
Sarcelles Sce au Porto
Teal ducks dressed in a Port sauce
Seakales Sauce au beurre
Steamed seakale stalks dressed with butter sauce
Eclairs au café
Coffee eclairs
Toast Norvegienn
Toast fingers smeared with anchovy butter and topped with an anchovy filet
"A glum little villa"
- Duke of Windsor
York Cottage, photographed in 1905, was the family home of the Prince and Princess of Wales (future King George V and Queen Mary"
(Photo: Royal Collection Trust /
© His Majesty King Charles III, 2024)
The dining room at York Cottage, Sandringham circa 1890s
(Photo: Royal Collection Trust
© His Majesty King Charles III, 2024)