The Queen's Diamond Jubilee picnic: A royal feast with a patriotic theme This morning, eight lorries will leave a Leicestershire packing plant and head south. They will be carrying what is possibly the biggest delivery of picnic hampers ever, to be distributed to 10,000 lucky folk selected by public ballot to attend a pre-concert déjeuner sur l'herbe in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Inside each hamper is a five-course meal masterminded by Heston Blumenthal, and produced and donated by Waitrose, using 62,500 strawberries, 32,000 eggs, 63,823 tomatoes, 1,600 cucumbers and 20,000 lemons. As might be expected from Blumenthal, this is no ordinary picnic, but one that takes a twist or two through traditional British fare. The poached salmon has been mixed with salmon smoked over Lapsang Souchong, while the Coronation chicken has been given an extra tickle with nigella seeds, tikka masala spices and onion. The lemon Madeira and a chocolate indulgence cake are garnished with candy and aniseed, and the pudding is an amalgam of three old favourites: the crumble, the fool and Eton mess. It is the culmination of nine months of collaboration between Graham Cassie, Waitrose's product developer, Mark Flanagan, Buckingham Palace's chef, and Blumenthal. "We did our best to make sure all the ingredients were produced here or imported from Commonwealth countries," says Mr Cassie. We were determined to make something high quality. There are strawberries from the Sandringham Estate and the salmon has been smoked by Macrae in Scotland. It is certainly a stylish picnic, but Britain's kings and queens have always known how to throw one of those. An illustration in Turberville's Book of Falconry (1575) shows a hunting picnic presided over by Elizabeth I. Ivan Day, a historian, has identified a feast of "cold fowls and wine," but there is also the suggestion of a barbecue, with grilled steaks cut straight from the kill. Queen Victoria's Balmoral picnics were legendary for their casual nature. Her grandson, George V, had a different approach. His chef would stand at the edge of the loch as the king and his party fished. Trout would be cooked as soon as they were fished out of the water. Today's event is a thoroughly modern take on the royal picnic. Let's hope that all 10,000 guests remember to write their bread-and-butter letters.