Ruling the roost: The story of coronation chicken... and how to make it

When Edward VII came to the throne in 1902, a Lincolnshire farmer decided to honour the new monarch by giving his name to a new breed of potato – the King Edward – which went on to become one of the great staples of British cookery, a source of some of the very best roasties you’ll ever eat. Half a century later, his great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II had a similarly indirect influence upon British cuisine when her coronation inspired the creation of one of the nation’s most misunderstood sandwich fillings: coronation chicken.

That such an auspicious occasion should result in so seemingly prosaic a dish was, in a way, rather fitting. The Queen’s coronation ceremony took place 2 June 1953, and despite being a triumphant affair, the events of that day carried an air of post-war austerity. The official banquet at Buckingham Palace involved a restrained four-course meal – a starter of chicken consommé, a main course of filet de boeuf mascotte (fillet of beef with artichokes, cocotte potatoes and truffle), a salad, and a simple dessert of mango ice cream.

To put this in context, at James II’s coronation in 1685 the first course alone consisted of 46 different dishes, brought into Westminster Hall by a procession of 73 people, including three on horseback. At Henry VI’s coronation in 1429, the menu included boars’ heads “in castles armed with gold”, a roasted peacock that had been painstakingly stuffed back into its own skin and feathers, a fritter “like the sun”, and a jelly illustrated with “the writing and musical notation of Te Deum Laudamus”. Henry himself was still a month short of his eighth birthday and would probably have been perfectly happy with a nice cake.

Coronation chicken was invented for a lunchtime function attended by several hundred foreign dignitaries who were in London for the celebrations. The dish is often attributed to the celebrity florist, interior designer and general domestic goddess Constance Spry, who was responsible for the flower arrangements at the coronation, and its recipe was published for the first time in 1956 in The Constance Spry Cookery Book – a vast, 1,000-plus-page masterpiece of 1950s home economics. In reality, coronation chicken (like most of the dishes in Spry’s book) was created by the florist’s friend and close collaborator Rosemary Hume. Hume was a respected chef who had founded the L’Ecole du Petit Cordon Bleu cookery school in Victoria in 1933. In 1946 Hume and Spry joined forces to open a domestic science school in Winkfield Place, Berkshire, and when the college’s students were asked to cater for the coronation lunch, Hume set about inventing a new dish for them to serve.

These days, most people expect coronation chicken to be a vivid yellow gloop, sweet with sultanas and lumps of fruit and spicy with curry sauce. But Hume’s original dish, as is to be expected from a woman who trained in Paris under the classical culinary master Henri-Paul Pellaprat, was very different to the oozing sandwich filling that would come to take its name. This was a subtle, creamy concoction, delicate in flavour and created with not a single sultana in sight. It was designed to be served with a rice salad rather than splodged between slices of bread.

Pretty much everything you need to recreate Hume’s version can be bought at Borough Market. It all begins with the chicken, of course, which back in the 1950s was still considered a luxury meat, largely reserved for the tables of the wealthy. You’ll be able to buy suitably regal, slow-growing breeds at any of the market’s butchers, all of them packed with the deep flavours such birds were valued for in the days before battery cages, high-protein feeds and intensive drug regimes turned chicken into a cheap, bland and ethically questionable staple.

Exactly what the Queen thought of coronation chicken is not a matter of public record. One thing is certain, though: it’s a far easier dish to produce at home than re-stuffed peacock.

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Serves: 6-8

Ingredients:

For the chicken:

1 medium chicken

100ml white wine

1 carrot, chopped

1 bouquet garni

4 black peppercorns

For the sauce:

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tsp tomato puree

125ml red wine

1 bay leaf

1 tsp sugar

1 lemon

2 tbsp apricot puree or jam

400ml mayonnaise

3 tbsp cream, lightly whipped

Method:

Place the whole chickens in a large pot, pour in the wine and enough water to cover the birds. Add the carrot, bouquet garni, peppercorns and a few pinches of salt, then gently poach for 50 mins, making sure that the liquid doesn’t boil too rapidly. If the liquid reduces below the top of the chickens, top up with more water.

Remove the pan from the heat but leave the chickens in their cooking liquor until cool enough to handle. Drain, discard the aromatics, but keep all that flavoursome stock for future use. Joint the chickens. Discard the skin, remove the meat from the bones and cut into bite-sized chunks.

To make the sauce, gently fry the chopped onion in 1 tbsp olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the curry powder and fry for 3 mins more. Add the tomato puree, wine and bay leaf, plus 125ml water. Add the sugar, a squeeze of lemon and a touch of seasoning. Simmer for 10 mins to reduce the sauce. Strain, then leave to cool.

Add the mayonnaise and apricot puree or jam to the sauce, season again with salt and black pepper, then finish with the whipped cream. Generously coat the chicken with the sauce, but make sure it’s not too sloppy. Garnish with lemon slices and serve with a herby rice salad.

You can visit Borough Market at 8 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1TL (020 7407 1002) or find more recipes online at boroughmarket.org.uk/recipes.