Seven centuries spent making a royal soup no one eats.

Imagine you're Matilda of Flanders, the wife of Norman-French William the Conqueror, and you're the newly-crowned Queen of England. You starred in the first-ever coronation of its kind to be held in Westminster Abbey.

Bigger than the King's own, some said.

That had to be pretty heady stuff. I mean, in a dirty, grimy, year 1,060 sort of way, sure. But big, shout it from the rooftops, heady news.

For you, Matilda of Flanders, anyway.

For the newly-defeated Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, well they don't know what to make of you and your foreign customs. Plus, you speak French and they're just so... so English.

Sacré bleu! My husband's champion rode horseback through the Abbey wearing full-plate armor, as is our Norman Tradition!, challenging anyone to a duel to the death in my husband's name should they daresay I wasn't the lawful wife of the King of England, and they didn't even know how to react!

Slack-jawed yokels, mon Dieu!

But it's a party, amirite, and, hey! Surprise-surprise! Here comes a rubber chicken course. (Because event catering never changes.) A soup of some sort. Sip-sip... wait a minute... merde!... this is pretty fucking good, you think. But of course you would. You're super-into the whole "almond milk meets chicken meets sugar and spices meets rosewater" concoction. Clean eating. And, really. Who isn't into that these days? Delish.

So you call your Royal Cook, Tezelin, over to the table where hubs grants them, and their heirs, the title Lords of the Manor of Addington, in perpetuity (*).

(*) there's always fine print.

And the fine print was this: the cook's heirs (or whomever was in possession of the title, because nothing travels in a completely straight line, not even light) must always provide the same chicken soup at future Royal Coronations. Like, the Official Royal Caterer for one particular dish. For eternity. Your children's eternity, too. And their children. And so on.

Whomever held title Lord of the Manor of Addington had to show up at every coronation and serve the same soup, made from the same recipe, and in the same manner. Forever. Not "until it goes out of fashion." Forever.

Forever turned out to be a nearly 800-year commitment.

The title bounced around as you'd expect it might across multiple generations, mingling with marriages and whatever form of primogeniture England happened to be following at the time. The title was even strong enough to survive treason (though the traitor did not).

Even the Yanks eventually got in on the action; the title was once proudly held by someone raised in The Colonies. What I'm saying is, Tezelin's Royal Soup got around, man. Sowed some wild oats. Frequented the ports. Saw some things.

But generation after generation, the holder of the title Lord of the Manor of Addington threw on an apron, fired up the soup-pot, and got to stirring until it was done, producing three bowls: one for the King or Queen, one for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and one for the newly-crowned King or Queen to dispose of at their pleasure. (Or disgust if you don't care for 11th Century tastes.)

It was what was known then (and today), as a kitchen serjeanty.

Thirty generations of Lords and Ladies Addington kept making the soup until, one day, they just didn't. The last bowl of Royal dillegrout was served in 1821, at George IV's coronation, 753 years after Tezelin's first batch, and then, without ceremony, the tradition simply stopped mattering to anyone. Like it never existed.

Though it had. For 753 years. More than three quarters of a millennium.

Absolute Absurdia. All of it. Soup to nuts.