Royal
Menus
Menu
Potage purèe de Gibier à l’Orge
Thick soup made from puréed game meats and barley
Saumon. Sauce homards
Salmon filets served with lobster sauce
Gigots de Mouton braisè legumes
Leg of mutton with braised vegetables
Quenelles de Volailles à l’ècarlatte
Chicken dumplings garnished with slices of pickled
tongue and dressed in a tomato based sauce
Oies rôties à l’allemande. Marmelade de pommes. Cresson
Roasted brined goslings served with apple
marmalade and watercress
Choux fleurs au gratin
Cauliflower cheese
Mousses à la Vanille
Vanilla mousse
Beurre fromage
Butter and cheese
Compôte Fruits
Fruit compote
Menu dated: 23rd November 1889
Dinner at the Kurfürstliches Palace, Koblenz, for Her Imperial and Royal Majesty the Dowager Empress Augusta of Germany and Dowager Queen of Prussia.
This 1889 menu from the Dowager Empress of Germany reveals quite an appetite for a 79 year-old lady who was less than 50 days away from her own death.
The Dowager Empress was the widow of Kaiser Wilhelm I who had passed away in the previous year. Since that time, the wheelchair-bound Augusta had made her home at the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin; but continued to make regular visits to her palace in Koblenz - the venue for this dinner of game soup, roast goslings with apple marmalade and a cauliflower-cheese.
As The Times of London confirmed in its reports of 1889, the Dowager Empress stayed in Koblenz from 4th November and returned to Berlin on 10th December: the last time she would visit her favorite palace.
Augusta had fallen in love with Koblenz in 1850 when her husband, before he became King and Emperor, had been appointed Governor-General of the Rhine Province.
The menu-cards at the dinner table of the Dowager Empress continued to be embossed with the dual arms of Augusta and her now deceased husband, Kaiser Wilhelm I. On the left side are the arms of the royal House of Prussia and, on the right, are the royal arms of the House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach from which Empress Augusta came.
