Well, it’s got alliteration going for it: Coronation Quiche. Online, there are mixed views about the merits of the King’s choice of dish to celebrate his big day. To cut to the chase, it’s a tart made with pastry using lard and butter, with the usual egg base plus tarragon, broad beans, spinach and cheese. Some smarty-pants are complaining that the spinach will make it soggy; others that there aren’t enough eggs around (been to M&S lately? they’re in stock!); others that lard, being pork fat, isn’t for everyone (oh, just use bloody Stork then).
Me, I’m mildly pro. Excuse me a minute while I go all Delia. A combination of lard and butter does indeed make the best pastry but I’d use the normal ratio of 2:1 flour to fat...this has a bit less fat. I’d also forget the milk in the recipe...
I use all cream — a thicker batter and nicer flavour. I’m with those who would suggest using watercress rather than spinach. Broad beans, good.
But really, you can’t go far wrong with a quiche. Like all the best dishes, it has the essential virtue of simplicity: the Ur-quiche from Lorraine is cheese and bacon, and very delicious it is too.
Yet the Coronation Q doesn’t really cut it as a classic. Compare and contrast with the 1952 Coronation Chicken, served to 300 guests at the Coronation luncheon, the success of which can be judged by its longevity; only yesterday I had a roll with Coronation Chicken in a sandwich shop in Royal Opera arcade.
The real deal is a sublime dish, invented by Rosemary Hume and immortalised in the Constance Spry Cookbook. Nowadays we might sneer at the curry powder in the curry cream, but made with freshly poached chicken and proper mayonnaise it’s delicious, distinguished, as Spry says, “by a delicate and nut-like flavour in the sauce”.
But if you don’t have the time for all that, then go for the simplicity that characterises much of the best English cooking. A Beef Wellington is very good, or if that’s too expensive, it’s very hard to beat a well-made pork pie. To follow, how about those very English recipes: syllabub — how hard is wine, sugar and cream to get wrong? — or a good trifle, with proper custard?
This is an opportunity to celebrate sneered-at national cooking. There’s much to enjoy. And, OK, some things are imports. Quiche may be Franco-German, but so too is the monarchy.
