Downton Abbey’s Food Secrets

From hot sausages to chickens galore, learn how the Downton set cooks juggle service not only for the show but for the cast members too!

Downton Abbey’s food secrets

It’s hard work creating seven-course dinners – especially if they will appear in TV’s most popular period drama

By , Entertainment Writer | 6:19PM GMT 05 Mar 2015

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Lisa Heathcote is the woman responsible for creating all the food digested on screen in Downton Abbey. Along with the show’s historical advisor Alastair Bruce, she gave an interview to the New York Times, revealing the plate-juggling that is involved with making several hundred souffles to accompany another charged dinner table scene. Here’s what we learned:

If Violet Crawley can’t eat it, it won’t be served

When the staff aren’t serving members of the Crawley family, they have to serve themselves. Nobody wants to watch Maggie Smith struggle with a spear of asparagus as she delivers a withering look.

So there’s a rule, explains Bruce. If Violet can’t serve herself using a spoon and fork, “it can’t be in the dining room.”

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