The most obvious dish to place on a menu which celebrates the Duke of Wellington is the classic Beef Wellington, the dish named in his honour, but the food historian Anne Menzies chose something far more subtle for the Woodstock Literary Festival’s dinner this year.

The dinner, which is always the highlight of the festival, was served in The Orangery at Blenheim Palace. The guest speaker was broadcaster and writer Peter Snow, who discussed his latest book, To War with Wellington — From Peninsula to Waterloo. Anne’s task, therefore, was to match the menu with Peter’s talk and the day Napoleon met his Waterloo in June 1815.

After extensive research, working mainly on recipes written by the great French chef Antonin Carême, Anne decided on Saumon Montpellier for the main dish, which was served to the Duke of Wellington, sovereigns and members of the five Allied powers during the open-air Victory Festival at Vertus, in September 1815.

Chef de cuisine Billy Bush, who prepared the dinner, said that it was the rich creamy sauce that made this dish so special. While he and his chefs adapted the original recipe for this sauce slightly, using a base of Hollandaise, he was confident they came up with a flavour close to that originally served.

Billy said: “True to the style of the times, we used 20 kilos of butter and 100 egg yolks to make that sauce, finishing it off with capers which added a piquancy that went perfectly with the poached salmon.”

He accepts that this makes for a very rich sauce, but it as it was served with poached salmon and steamed fresh seasonal vegetables from the Blenheim Estate, it was the perfect choice.

All the recipes Anne chose were taken from Carême’s Le Patissier Royal Parisien, as this 19th-century chef was hailed the king of chefs and the chef to kings, tsars, princes and diplomats. Such was his reputation as the best cook in Europe, that the Prince Regent tempted him to England in 1817, promising him £2,000, which was twice the pay of Lord Cholmondeley, the Lord Steward.

It was Carême who codified the six degrees of boiling sugar, culminating in caramel, which we still use as a guide today. He also established four classic sauces as the root of all others: bechamel, velouté, allemande and espagnole. He even coined the term nouvelle cuisine to describe his own revolution in food.

All meals that Carême created began with soup, as he regarded soup as a medicinal aperitif, which is why the festival dinner began with Potage à la Conde, a delicious consommé as served to the Tsar Alexander in August 1815.

Billy and his team rather enjoyed making this soup, which combined two different stocks, clarified with minced beef and egg white.

“We don’t get asked for consommé very often these days. This dish took me back to my college days,” he admitted.

Anne explained that when researching a menu such as this, she has her own internal filter.

“Taste, texture, colour, temperature and the ability of the kitchen to produce and serve large numbers successfully “I also try to convey the spirit of the times as historic dinners that relate to their surroundings not only intensify the experience for the diner but bind the different elements of the meal together into a unique whole. Everything is related.”

Specific colours are particularly important to Anne. As she explained: “With Napoleon’s Coronation dessert, for example, it was important that we had fresh yellow peaches as the yellow dome of the peach is subliminally closer to a crown than the white. The embellishment of finely chopped pistachio nuts contrasted well in taste, colour and texture.”

Anne went on to say that the base was made of a very light puff pastry, as vol-au-vent was an invention of Carême’s. He was also credited as being the first to pipe cream and spin sugar.

“The intense gold from the spun sugar literally ‘crowned’ the symbolism. All the elements of the dessert were intricate and historically correct,” she added.

Billy said that he and his team enjoyed the challenge Anne set them. “Often the people who stage special dinners in the Orangery ask us for advice and menu suggestions. Anne had done all the work for us — all we had to do was adapt some of Carême’s recipes to meet modern day needs.”

Well, the dinner was a great success, as the guests testified. When Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, a Patron of the festival, spoke to Anne over coffee, he said: “You have made three unlikely characters in history sit down at the same meal together — Napoleon, Wellington and the Tsar Alexander — congratulations.”

Thanks to Anne’s dedicated research, Billy’s superb kitchen skills and the wines presented by Castillo Perelada, which mirrored the Spanish wines served at Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia’s Royal Wedding in 2004, the dinner was a triumph.