In the Kitchen with Wallis

A reader asks, "Is it possible to have too much fennel in anything?"  The answer is no, and I was reminded of the Duchess of Windsor's dictum:  "One can never be too rich or too thin," to which we may now add "or have too much fennel."

The Duchess's personal cookbook was auctioned at Sotheby's some years ago, and reading excerpts from it made it clear why this woman could never have been Queen.  Her various marriages were small potatoes.  Small burned potatoes.  Far more serious are the revelations in her recipe collection.  Undoubtedly this is what Prime Minister Baldwin and the Archbishop of Canterbury were privy to. 

Imagine if Wallis had become chatelaine of Buckingham Palace, and all the crowned heads of Europe had come for dinner, and she served them "Sole in Half-Mourning" (I am not making this up), after an appetizer of "Avocado Pears Tahiti" (avocado halves filled with rum and brown sugar), and ended the meal on a final sugar rush with "Gateau Egyptian."

Here is the recipe, more or less exactly as it appeared in "My Personal Cookbook" by the Duchess of Windsor: 

Make a light sponge cake that is fairly deep.  Scoop out the centre.

Cover the outside of the cake with cold blackberry jelly.  Fill the centre

with whipped cream.  When ready to serve, pour hot blackberry jelly over all.

So when this long-suppressed cookbook was discovered, Wallis and David were packed off to France, where the Duke spent the rest of his days eating her cooking and pondering his decision.

Back at Buck House, holders of the Royal Franchise sometimes suggested punishing the former Edward VIII by reducing his allowance.  But George VI wouldn't hear of it.  "No, no," he said.  "The poor bloke's suffering enough."