A meal enjoyed by Queen Victoria when she visited Perthshire has been recreated for a TV show.
The potted trout and haunch of venison are two of the delicacies prepared by celebrity chef Nick Nairn.
He visited Blair Castle along with TV presenter Dougie Vipond to produce three episodes of BBC’s Landward programme.
The show makers took a step back in time at the ancestral home of the Murray Clan with castle archivist, Keren Guthrie. Together they explored the archives to uncover the estate’s culinary past, including menus and recipes enjoyed upstairs and downstairs, and found the dishes cooked for a Royal visit to the castle in 1844.
The food archive at Blair Castle dates back hundreds of years, with some recipes going back as far as the 1700s. All of the dishes served to guests were created using ingredients grown on the land, highlighting the spread of produce available to the estate, as well as the diversity of the palette at that time.
In addition to the food archives, produce used to create lavish dinners in the formal dining room was recorded in household books at Blair Castle.
Queen Victoria visited the Highland estate several times. During a visit with Prince Albert in 1844, a haunch of red deer venison from the estate was prepared and cooked for her. Taking inspiration from this, Nick Nairn cooked collops – the Scots word for medallions – of Blair Castle venison with a whisky and chocolate sauce.
Keren Guthrie, the castle archivist, said: “It was wonderful spending time with the Landward team delving into the depths of our food archives.
“They reinforce the importance that food played in our lives way back in the 1600s bringing people together and 400 years on, it is just as important today.
“Local provenance has been a trend among chefs in recent years, however, looking back at the castle recipes, we can see it was just as important back then too.
“Everyone enjoyed watching Nick bring back some of the old recipes to life with a modern twist and it may hopefully encourage us all to experiment and try other recipes from the archives.”
The episodes can be viewed on the BBC iPlayer.
