This column was not my idea. Last month, my friend Ashok Malik, writer and think-tanker (is that even a word?) messaged me an idea for Rude Food.
“Hi Veer”, wrote Ashok. “As the coronation of King Charles approaches – a momentous event in which 20 of us in India are deeply invested – can you think of what kind of dish we need to write on Coronation Chicken and invent to reflect the multicultural Britain of 2023?”
I liked the irony (“an important event in which 20 of us in India are deeply invested”) and I remembered the dish well because I had the mixed fortune (bad luck?) of going to a (minor) English public school. Coronation Chicken served.
The original Coronation Chicken was invented in 1953 by Rosemary Hume and her students at the Le Cordon Bleu School in London, to serve as a feast for dignitaries who came to London to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Although the banquet was held in England and both Rosemary Hume and the Queen were mostly British, the dish was given a French name because in that era, all fancy food had to sound French.
It was called Paulette Reine Elisabeth (“Chicken Queen Elizabeth”) and was suggested to be an update of a dish created for George V’s Silver Jubilee. In fact, the dish was created largely from scratch by Hume to fit very specific situations.
The banquet was a luncheon in the Great Hall of Westminster School in London where kitchen facilities were limited. Hume chose a cold chicken dish that didn’t require a minute of cooking. A cold sauce made from cooked onions, tomato puree, red wine, bay leaves, apricot puree, lemon, cream and – wait for it – curry powder made the dish unusual.
Why curry powder? The simple explanation is that they didn’t know much about Indian spices in those days (nor were they readily available in London), but they knew what curry powder was. It cannot be a tribute to the empire because by 1953, India had already become independent six years earlier. Nor was Britain the multicultural society it is today. My best guess is that Hume wanted to find a way to bring cold cream sauce to life and decided to be innovative.
The dish, apparently, was a big hit at the banquet, where it was washed down with Krug champagne (which, at least, is really French) and then more or less disappeared from view. Then, three years later, a recipe appeared in a Constance Spry cookbook under the name Coronation Chicken, and it became popular. By the time I first served it, many years later, it had become a staple in many forms: as a sandwich filler, as a salad, as a main course, etc.
I’m sorry to say I was never a fan. But apparently, many British people thought differently. Does she have this cookbook recently? Heston Blumenthal wrote: “Coronation Chicken was a favorite in the 1970s when I was growing up. Me and my mom loved it and it was a staple of any picnic we had…”
Ashok Malik is not the first person to think of updating it. Nigella Lawson has a recipe for a chilli and mango version. Yottam Ottolenghi bakes Coronation Chicken with Chicken and Broccoli. (This sounds totally revolting.)
But the first significant official update came for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, when 10,000 people who won tickets for a picnic on the Queen’s Lawn at Buckingham Palace were given hampers containing Jubilee Coronation Chicken. This updated version was created by Blumenthal himself, perhaps as a tribute to all the family picnics where he ate it.
The menu describes the Blumenthal update as “an aromatic blend of Indian spices mixed with mayonnaise, shredded chicken and aromatic coriander with peppery nigella seeds.”
In other words, no curry powder but lots of Indian spices and coriander and kalonji.
Was this really the multicultural update Ashok wanted? Was Coronation Chicken already multicultural, especially after Blumenthal updated it?
I tracked down Heston, who was honeymooning on the Thai island of Samui with his bride, the radiant and super-capable Melanie. He told me what is this cookbook? Which contains the recipe for Jubilee Coronation Chicken. This is a great recipe. You can make a sandwich with it. It’s not exactly the original that went into her jubilee hamper but a simpler version for home cooks.
It turns out Coronation Chicken has a special place on Heston’s palate. He recalls, his first exposure (as a child) to Indian flavors and he loved the spice. He then visited local Indian restaurants, discovered dishes like chicken korma and began a lifelong love affair with Indian food. (Is it a cookbook? Has great Indian recipes.) He even once made Coronation Chicken Ice Cream and often uses it in the dish. He raised it above the large Bangladeshi area of Brick Lane in London and everyone loved it.
The British, meanwhile, have gone ahead with a special dish for the King’s coronation and, disappointingly, it’s not particularly multicultural or multi-ethnic in inspiration. There are those who believe that the perfect dish for today’s Britain might be the culinary equivalent of Rishi Sunak on a plate: Punjabi with East African influences, refined by a gentle use of South Indian spices.
Instead, Palace has gone with a Coronation Quiche consisting of milk, double cream, cheddar cheese, spinach and broad beans.
In terms of multi-ethnic dishes, it is as white as the milk and cream that is poured into it. But apparently it was chosen by Charles and Camilla themselves. And while the King has done much to promote multiculturalism in Britain, his own tastes are said to have run into poached eggs and non-spicy food. But he has campaigned for environmental causes, so a vegan quiche might agree with his philosophy. Worryingly though, the official recipe released by the palace calls for lard. It misses the vegan angle to say nothing of inclusivity. Lard is pork fat so observant Muslims and Jews may have a problem with quiche.
I think you can make it without the lard, but you’ll have to tinker with the recipe. Either way, it doesn’t sound terribly exciting. I doubt anyone will be writing about it 70 years later, as we are doing with Coronation Chicken, or that a great chef like Heston will bother to update it years later.
The quiche is the creation of Royal Chef Mark Flanagan, who collaborated with Heston on Diamond Jubilee Chicken. Perhaps they should have hired the two again to make a dish that is not fit for a king (who can’t eat too much spice) at least to represent the current state of Charles’s kingdom.
It can still be done, if not for the coronation on 6th May then for another royal event!
So maybe…
From HT Brunch, April 29, 2023
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