platinum jubilee

For the Platinum Jubilee in June 2022, I considered going to London. Then I decided it sounded like a nightmare, couldn’t be bothered and stayed at home instead. My celebration involved raiding the cupboards, visiting the supermarket and tasting food and drink with the royal mark on the packaging. That was considerably more manageable.

I had noticed those little royal arms on products since moving to the UK, often alongside the words “By Appointment to Her Majesty”. Some were on things we already used, while others gave me an excuse to try something different. These were the packets and bottles I had in front of me in 2022, during Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee. My tasting didn’t tell me what she personally liked to eat.

The mark on the packet

The Royal Family’s explanation of royal warrants describes them as recognition for people or companies that regularly supply goods or services to the Royal Household. A warrant gives its holder the right to display the royal arms, accompanied by wording identifying the grantor, company and type of goods or services. That explains the mark I was looking for, rather than making every item on my table a royal menu.

Royal arms above wording By Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on an orange Schweppes label
Queen Elizabeth II’s warrant wording on a Schweppes bottle photographed in 2021, a separate example of the mark. Cropped photo by Zigad, CC BY-SA 4.0.

I even got the wording wrong at first. I kept saying “By Appointment of Her Majesty”, until I read the Schweppes ginger ale bottle and realised it said “to”. The bottle named Queen Elizabeth II. I was rather late in correcting myself, but at least the ginger ale tasted good. After the mustard, I was very pleased to have something to wash it down with.

A tiny amount of mustard is enough

Maldon sea salt flakes were an easy place to start, because we used them all the time. The royal mark was on the back of the packaging. I had said I would taste everything, so I ate a couple of flakes on their own. They tasted salty. Very salty. That was hardly a surprise, and I still thought they were delicious.

Colman’s English mustard was a different experience. We kept it in the cupboard because I liked the smallest amount on something such as a hot sausage roll. On its own, it went straight up my sinuses. It was much stronger than the American-style mustard I had been used to, and I didn’t want anyone expecting that milder flavour to get the wrong idea. I liked it in tiny quantities. This tasting was a reminder of exactly how tiny.

The Angostura aromatic bitters had another familiar place in our cupboard: cocktails. I had never simply tasted them on their own before. The oversized paper label bothered me, but that was nothing compared with the taste. By itself, it reminded me of cough syrup and was worse than the mustard. In a cocktail, I thought it was absolutely delicious. Those were very different experiences with the same bottle.

The chocolate was much easier

We also had Cadbury Bournville cocoa for cooking and hot-chocolate-type things. Eating the powder on its own was worse than the bitters. It gave me flashbacks to the cinnamon challenge, which was not what I wanted from a cupboard tasting. Moving on to Dairy Milk was a much happier moment.

I kept coming back to plain Dairy Milk after trying different British chocolates. It was one of my favourites, even though I normally preferred chocolate with crunchy biscuit or wafer bits. This was lovely exactly as it was. The royal mark on the wrapper was tiny and hidden under a flap on the back. I thought that was quite a confident place to put it, and I couldn’t have been happier to be eating the chocolate.

Twinings pomegranate green tea was something I had spotted at Tesco and wanted to try. I had no idea whether the Queen drank that particular tea. I wasn’t normally much of a green-tea person, but this tasted like pomegranate and I thought it was quite nice. My usual choice was Yorkshire tea, so this was a pleasant change rather than a new claim about royal tea habits.

Some things should have come later

The Bendicks chocolate mints were good and really minty. Unfortunately, I had them halfway through the tasting. My mouth then tasted of dark chocolate and peppermint, and I realised I probably should have left them until the end. Everything afterwards was going to have a bit of toothpaste about it. That included the gin.

McVitie’s milk chocolate digestives were another welcome part of the selection. I thought they were a dependable choice and good for dunking in tea, although perhaps Yorkshire rather than pomegranate green tea. Then there was Lyle’s black treacle, which I had originally bought to make sticky toffee pudding. I hadn’t known what treacle was before that. The pudding had surprised me, but a straight spoonful from the tin was not something I wanted to repeat.

I knew that not everyone liked the royal family or wanted to celebrate the Jubilee. Staying home had suited me, with the food, drinks and some multicoloured bunting because I hadn’t managed to find Union Flag bunting. The little marks on the packaging had given me a way into the occasion. Dairy Milk was a much nicer part of that experience than raw cocoa or a spoonful of treacle.

Watch my Platinum Jubilee cupboard tasting.