Lords & Ladles

The majestic Birr Castle in County Offaly is the home of the 7th Earl of Rosse and his wife. As Catherine goes hunting for pheasants, Paul contends with some strange ingredients in order to create a meal from a 17th-century cookbook, including a potato pie from a 1666 recipe.

The chefs descend upon Tullynally Castle, the largest house in private ownership in Ireland and the ancestral home of Lord and Lady Longford. Assigned to prepare a feast based on the menu of an 1809 house party, Paul fishes for perch in appalling weather, and Catherine finds out about the family's links to the Duke of Wellington.

The chefs serve up a variety of 1870s fare at County Monaghan’s Castle Leslie, one of Ireland’s most exclusive hotels and the home to Sir Jack Leslie. They fish for pike and stalk deer, as well as admire one of Winston Churchill’s baby dresses and discover the best use for the discarded canopy of a Harrier Jump Jet.

At beautiful Westport House, the ancestral home of the Earls of Sligo, the chefs hear tales of sugar plantations and slavery from Sheelyn Brown, the many times great-granddaughter of pirate queen Grace O’Malley. They also attempt to catch salmon from the Delphi River and lobsters and oysters from the wild Atlantic Ocean.

At Ballywalter Park on the beautiful Ards Peninsula in County Down, the chefs are excited to prepare a feast that is a direct copy of a meal that was first served up at a dinner party here on November 28, 1902. Not only do they know what was served, they also know who it was served to, which adds a real sense of living history to the proceedings.

Cappoquin House is home to Sir Charles Keane, whose family were forced from their native Derry estate during the 16th century and had their beautiful Waterford home burned by Irish Republicans during the civil war of 1922. At this storied structure, the chefs create a meal using recipes from a very famous cookbook written by a very famous chef, Hannah Glasse, in 1747.