'Strict' diet Queen Camilla imposed on her children

Queen Camilla was 'strict' about the food she allowed her children to eat, according to her son Tom Parker Bowles.

In a recent articler published in You magazine, he said his mother was a 'naturally good cook' and shared some of her favourite family recipes to make when he was growing up.

However, he said there was a list of exciting foods he wasn't allowed as a child, because his mother didn't approve.

Remembering his mother's best dishes, he said: "She is a naturally good cook, everything from roast chicken and pork chops to tarragon chicken, smoked sausages in cream, and asparagus drenched in butter. As well as serious scrambled eggs and a mean cheese omelette. We had vegetables from the garden, game shot by my father and fish that he had caught. The fridge was always full of good snacks."

He also recalled his father, Andrew Parker Bowles' cooking skills, adding: "My father’s one recipe involved steak being cooked inawire toast rack on the top of the Aga. The room would fill with smoke, and the top was coated in burnt fat. But it did taste very good indeed. My mother, who had to clean it up, was less impressed and it was soon banned."

Speaking about the foods that weren't allowed in his childhood, he said: " We grew up eating locally, seasonally and organically,
way before they became the overused buzzwords they are today – my mother shopped in the butcher, fishmonger, bakery and greengrocer. But when Sainsbury’s opened in Chippenham at the start of the 80s it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz where it moves from monochrome to technicolour.

"Ice Magic! Birds Eye Chicken Pies! Butterscotch Angel Delight and huge variety packs of Monster Munch! We wanted it all, although my mother was fairly strict in what we were allowed."

Tom Parker Bowles shared the insights into his childhood to help promote his new book, which offers an insight into the eating habits of our monarchs past and present.

He also shared some of his happiest food memories, including chaotic picnics with his mum while he was still at school.

He said: "The fourth of June was our speech day, when parents came [to Eton] with picnics. And while some would haveafull three-course lunch served by butlers on a linen-covered table, my mother and aunt would do a last-minute rush around Sainsbury’s: prawn sandwiches, cold cocktail sausages, luridly pink taramasalata and pickled onion Monster Munch. Pure picnic perfection."

Cooking And The Crown by Tom Parker Bowles will be published on September 26.