The Food of Downton Abbey

Hello again,

Completely obsessed with Downton Abbey, I’ve spent a lot of time watching the episodes to figure out the layout of the first floor.  The whole reason I wanted to write this blog was to post a floor plan of Downton Abbey!!!  The map on the Highclere Castle website was illegible, and I was excited to be able to piece together a floor plan by watching the show!

Later, of course, I found a map confirming my results that I have posted at the end of this blog.  In keeping with the theme of this blog, I have written about the food of Downton Abbey as well as farming practices during the Edwardian era.  I uploaded copyrighted pictures for this post, since this forum is for educational purposes only.
 

 

                       Courtesy (C) Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece

Ivan Day, a preeminent British food historian interviewed by NPR explains that “The aristocracy saw food as a way of impressing people…some of it was very technically dazzling and difficult to do."  The cooks of the day were definitely skilled at sophisticated cuisines. 

"It was very much the duty of the hostess and her staff to put very good food on the table when her husband and guests were being served," says Day,  "And they were able to do it because there was a skill base that was very large, because so many people were employed as servants — and particularly servants in kitchens."

The Crawleys would have eaten four times a day—breakfast, lunch, tea time, and dinner.   Food depicted on the show has been typical of the era: meat pie, crepes, raspberry meringue.  I perused the internet and came up with some dishes that would have been served during the Edwardian era. 

Typically each dinner would be comprised of 6-22 courses:  The first course would consist of soup and seafood.  Examples would be creamy watercress soup, oysters on the half shell and poached salmon with piccata sauce. 

The entrée included meat and often featured poultry.  Mustard tarragon chicken, lamb stew with lemon and dill, filet mignon with mushrooms and mustard-red-wine sauce are typical dishes for the entree.

The second course followed the entrée and would often include the heaviest meat and sauces—items such roast turkey with poached plums, roast mutton and roast leg of pork and or lamb were common.

The third course would usually include game bird like squib, pigeon, and quail.  The last course would entail sweets like fruit jelly, meringue with roasted rhubarb and strawberry sauce, apple bread pudding, or jellied cranberry sauce.

 

Drinks in the Library

Their beverages include tea (of course), punch, scotch or wine.  The English use "Claret" as an all inclusive term meaning a red table wine usually from Bordeaux.  On the show, Anna provides instruction to Mr. Moseley on proper wine service at Downton, mentioning to him that the Crawleys don’t drink much of it, as there are about 5-6 varietals served with different courses of dinner. Cousin Isobel is seen drinking Pimm’s Cup, which is a mix of Pimm’s No.1 and lemonade, garnished with lemons, mint or fruit or cucumber—add gin.

   

                         Isobel drinking Pimm’s in the Great Hall/Saloon during the Servant’s Ball

Many of the skilled servants were lost in the trenches or moved into industrial jobs after the WW1.  Lack of skilled staff and food shortages (that lasted well beyond the war) of sugar, cream and imported produce curbed the complexity of the menu.  "Our food culture got incredibly simplified, incredibly slimmed down — everybody was on an austerity program," Day says.

The artisanal cheese-making culture nearly vanished as well. The aristocracy also began to lose their wealth and power due to taxes and political shifts.  "The people who were talented cooks worked for the nobility, the aristocracy and the gentry," Day says. "And all the knowledge of the food was in those places. And once you knocked out that social layer ... you lost that food culture.”  Due to war and economics the food rationing didn’t end until 1954 when British cooking was able to make a comeback.

I imagined that the food of Downton Abbey came from family-owned, idyllic, small organic farms, but the Edwardian era was quite modern in terms of farming as well as cooking.  WWI food shortages resulted in the importation of 5,000 tractors ordered from Henry Ford.  (Hence Edith was able to drive a tractor in the second season.)

The agricultural revolution had started in Great Britain during the early 1700s, so by the Edwardian era, crop rotation, fertilizers, irrigation, and early toxic pesticides—arsenic and lead, sulfur, copper, mercury—were common.
 

Crop rotation (rather than fields lying fallow) and selective breeding increased livestock productivity through the winter--which increased the availability of meat and dairy products year around.

Although there wasn’t modern erosion control, or sophisticated soil conservation, or government-backed irrigation, and DDT had not been invented yet, the enclosure movement in England eliminated traditional smallholdings, combining the land into larger tracts that could be more efficiently farmed.  Most farms in Europe had electrical power by the mid-1930s.  All in all, both farming and dining were sophisticated during the times of Downton Abbey.  The sophistication and elegance of Downton Abbey as a whole are depicted from photos at the Highclere website. (www.Highclerecastle.co.uk.)





                                             Two Pictures of the Saloon (Great Hall) 

The far doors of the Saloon open to the Entrance Hall/The Christmas tree at the South end of the Saloon

This following floor plan is slightly blurry, but I found it at JaneAustensWorld.wordpress.com.  (CLICK ON THE MAP TO ENLARGE) This is the only legible map I could find on the internet.  There is an illegible floor plan on the Highclere website, but, by watching the show, I was able to place the rooms used on Downton Abbey—later confirmed by the following map. 

                                               CLICK ON THE MAP TO ENLARGE

SOUTH

NORTH

The rooms depicted on the show include the Entrance Hall (with telephone), Saloon/Great Hall (with Christmas tree), Library (with secret door in bookcase) & Small Library/North library, the Music room (which shown only briefly on the show) and the Drawing room (many scenes are filmed here.)   


For reference, at the beginning the Christmas special (1st season), Daisy walks a path starting in the Music room, through the Drawing Room into the Great Hall /Saloon to admire the Christmas tree, and then down the servants stairs just north of the Dining Room.     


The Double-Library includes the Small/North Library beyond the pillars. (The direction is reversed on the map.)

The Music Room leads to the Library, which has a hidden door disguised as a bookshelf.

                                                                   Drawing Room

Highclere’s smoking room, pink room/morning room, and secretary’s room are not used on the show.  In real life, Maggie Smith rests in between takes in Highclere’s morning room/pink room on the map. (See these rooms at www.Highclerecastle.co.uk) 

However, there is one “mystery room” on the show with mustard yellow walls and full of marble statues depicted in the first season.  I call it the mystery room, because it is not pictured on the Highclere website.

In the “mystery room” scene, Cora is sitting at her desk when the Dowager Countess enters the room saying, “The Ambassador is dangerous, but then how many people really go to the Turkish Embassy…we can’t have him assassinated—I suppose?” 

I think this room may be Cora’s boudoir/downstairs sitting room.  Early in the second season Cora and the family are told to use the boudoir and small/north library for their private quarters when Downton Abbey is used as a WW1 convalescent home. 

A boudoir can be an upstairs or downstairs sitting room.  The mystery room looks like it is on the first floor,  so I’m guessing that it is actually the real Highclere Study —when I’m trying to piece these rooms together, I always feel like I’m playing the board game “Clue.”

On the show the staff dining room would be located directly below the Crawley’s dining room, and the kitchen (sometimes called it the scullery) would be located in the basement north of the staff dining room, along with Carson’s office and Misses Hugh’s sitting room.  Outside of which I can almost smell the Downton Abbey servants' dinner of lamb stew...hopefully Mrs. Pattmore won't put too much salt in it.

A Votre Sante (Here's to Your Health), Alix