Feeding 5,000 guests was hard work
At times, as many as 5,000 people were in residence in the Palace of Versailles. All of them needed feeding. What’s more, since they were the guests of the King himself, they needed to be fed well. This meant lavish dinners, with only the best ingredients from both home and abroad. And, of course, this meant that the palace needed to have the necessary facilities to deliver the kind of hospitality guests of the King of France would have rightly expected.
The palace kitchens were constructed relatively early on in the life of the Palace of Versailles, between 1661 and 1678. As with the stables, the kitchens were located outside of the main palace itself, largely in order to spare the courtiers and esteemed guests from the smells and the noise. Here, as many as 2,000 staff would prepare two to eight dishes per daily meal. Dishes would have included fresh fruit, soups and a wide range of meats. The demands imposed on the kitchen would be even greater whenever the King threw one of his lavish banquets. Then, the hardworking kitchen staff might be required to produce as many as 30 separate dishes for hundreds of guests.
While locating the kitchens far away from the main rooms of the palace may have had its advantages, there was one major drawback. King Louis XIV in particular liked to dine in his own private quarters. Since the distance between the kitchen and the King’s Apartments was so great, most meals were served cold.
Following the French Revolution of 1789, all the kitchen equipment in the Palace of Versailles was sold off. The kitchen buildings were also demolished at the beginning of the 19th century, as were the ice stores. Here, ice hauled up from nearby lake was stored before being chiseled off to serve with drinks and chilled dishes. Since ice was so valuable in those days before electric freezers, the stores even had their own armed guards!