As Jay Rayner has pointed out, speculation over the menu to be served at today's wedding has entered the realm of the rabid. The Independent reports that Swiss chef Anton Mosimann will be cooking dinner, though reliable sources deny this. The Mail assures us they'll drink English wine, and three cheers for that. Meanwhile, a Canadian TV station tracked down the Queen's former chef (one of 20 who follow her "wherever she goes", like a group of betoqued stalkers) and breathlessly broke the story that "Her Majesty's royal palate" does not care for garlic or onions. Charles and Camilla's 2005 wedding dinner was a relatively low-key buffet, and in a time of cuts and penury the Windsors may feel it prudent not to scoff too much foie gras and caviar.
Buck House were as cagey with me as they have been with other hacks on the subject of the food, but whatever gets served will be subject to the same two challenges as any wedding: the logistics of mass catering and the influence of tradition. Tradition is always double-edged: nobody wants to feel bound by it, but flouting it can seem wilful or perverse. Mark Niemierko, one of the country's leading wedding planners, told me: "Some people start off with the idea of serving veal or sashimi, but then they realise Aunty So-and-So is coming and there's no way she'd eat raw fish." Previous royal weddings have had their menus written in French, which would look pretty naff now, and it's also customary to name specific dishes after the guests. Diana's "suprême de volaille Princesse de Galles" was a chicken breast stuffed with lamb mousse. Coming as it did after quenelles of brill in lobster sauce, it was a meal that would have done little for the bride's burgeoning bulimia.
A wedding is a public act to mark a private action. As such, it's steeped in ritual and edible custom. In Germany, a fine consommé, the Hochzeitssuppe, is traditional; in Japan it's hamaguri clams, in Iraq marzipan sweets, in China gingko nuts. The French stack profiteroles into the marital phallus of a croquembouche. A Gamo bride in southern Ethiopia will have her head covered in grass and a butter made from intestines. Through some folkloric memesis these foods become associated with prosperity, fertility or just good luck. In Britain, of course, a cake of some sort will always feature.
The British wedding cake may be the descendant of a Roman custom which saw the groom break a barley loaf over his bride's head, an act that sealed the marriage. At medieval weddings people made a stack of buns, and the couple stood on tiptoe and tried to kiss over the pile without knocking it down or falling over. The fashion for elaborately tiered cakes didn't emerge until the mid-1800s. Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding cake, slices of which survive, was distributed among the nobility of Europe. When Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married George VI in 1923, the cake stood 9ft high and weighed 360kg. One of the few culinary details to emerge about the impending nuptials of "Kate 'n' Wills" is the information that the groom, like Wayne Rooney, will have his own cake. In Canada it was traditional to hide a nutmeg inside the wedding cake; the person who found was believed to be the next to marry.
Feasting is the major constant of weddings – the fasting ceremony is a rare thing. By far the most useful "miracle" in the Bible is the transmutation of water into wine during the marriage at Cana, an episode that shows the Hellenism that then survived in parts of the Middle East. The wedding feast of Camacho in Don Quixote captures the hungry medieval peasant's almost pornographic desire for satiety. In that banquet, a whole steer was stuffed with two dozen suckling pigs and roasted on an elm-tree spit, served with chickens and geese and eggs and 60 wineskins holding eight gallons of booze apiece. Emma's wedding in Madame Bovary displays comparable excess for different reasons. When the hero marries Minnehaha in Longfellow's epic The Song of Hiawatha, the guests eat sturgeon, pike, pemmican, buffalo marrow, "haunch of deer and hump of bison" – though the bride and groom "Tasted not the food before them / Only waited on the others / Only served their guests in silence."
People are not afraid to eat well and widely at modern weddings too. Today's caterers say that Wags notoriously ask for Christmas dinner with all the trimmings at their weddings – Christmas being the one meal a year in which they let themselves eat properly. Victoria Adams reportedly wanted to serve roast turkey for her and David Beckham's guests in 1999, but was finally persuaded that it would be difficult to prevent the meat from drying out. The caterer convinced the couple to serve guinea fowl, though neither had heard of it before.
Only in south Asia does the feast aspect of weddings seem to be threatened: India has considered introducing a law to restrict wasted wedding food, while in 2004 Pakistan banned "un-Islamic" displays of wealth at the walima or wedding party. This is hardly a commonplace attitude, though: one of the best weddings I ever attended was in El Jadida, Morocco, which was strictly Muslim and where it was taken for granted that everyone should eat their fill and then some.
Mark Niemierko says that, in 2009, his flower budget fell while his food budget rose. "I had a client who worked at Goldman Sachs in New York, and he was concerned not to look too ostentatious during the financial crisis. So we focused on getting the food perfect, because everyone has got to eat." That banker was a canny fellow: a good "breakfast" is essential for a successful wedding, whether it be a Niemierko-style £600-per-person blowout at the Connaught, a hog roast in the garden or a Margot Henderson event with food from St John. Without good and generous food a wedding will tend to sag, and you can only reach a merry din once the guests are met and the feast is set.
