According to a former royal chef, there are six interesting culinary facts about Queen Elizabeth.

For example, Queen Elizabeth ordered scones with her tea daily — but gave them to her corgis instead.

According to McGrady’s cookbook, scones were part of Queen Elizabeth’s daily tea service during his time at Buckingham Palace.

“They were served religiously each day, alternating between fruit scones or plain scones,” McGrady wrote. “While the Queen insisted on them as part of her tea, I suspect she didn’t actually like scones. I say that because she never, ever ate them.”

McGrady added that the Queen would feed them to her corgis.

“Instead, at the end of her daily tea, the Queen would take a scone and crumble it onto the floor for the corgis. It seems the dogs quite liked them,” he wrote.

Chefs weren’t allowed to cut tea sandwiches into rectangles or squares because they resembled coffins, according to McGrady.

McGrady recalled asking a fellow chef why it was required to trim corners off of tea sandwiches for Queen Elizabeth during his early days at Buckingham Palace.

“I was told to never cut a square or a rectangle,” McGrady wrote in his cookbook. “It looked too much like a coffin and it meant you wished the Queen ill. I was mindful to never make that mistake.”

The Queen had a well-known love for chocolate but gave up the treat each year for Lent.

As McGrady wrote in his book, the Queen gave up chocolate for Lent, so she did without “her favorite Bendicks Bittermints and Charbonnel et Walker chocolates.”

“On Easter Sunday the chefs would go to great lengths to prepare all sorts of chocolate treats to make up for the forty-day abstinence,” McGrady wrote. “There were chocolate cakes plus milk chocolate, white chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate eggs.

McGrady added that the chocolate sweets were served at royal teatime for “several days” before being placed in the staff dining room.

Queen Elizabeth was “particular” about eating fruits in season.

In a chapter about Windsor Castle, McGrady wrote about the Queen’s love for the Royal Ascot during the summer. The Royal Ascot is a prestigious five-day horse racing event in the UK founded by Queen Anne in 1711.

“Ascot kicked off the summer for palace chefs,” McGrady wrote. “Now we could use strawberries, cherries, and all the wonderful summer fruits.”

He continued: “The Queen was quite particular about eating fruits in season. We could serve strawberries almost every day during the summer — but woe betide any chef who put them on the menu in January.”