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| Diamond jubilee: six decades of coronation chicken | Diamond jubilee: six decades of coronation chicken |
| (10 months later) | |
| How foolish I was to think that, whatever one thought of the monarchy, however sad and exasperated one could be by the Windsors, coronation chicken was the kind of dish behind which most Britons could unite. If nothing else, I thought it captured our island story more than any amount of pageantry or grovelling. Curry is the national go-to dish, chicken our favourite meat, and the British palate tends more towards the sweet and creamy – at least in its savoury dishes – than any other country. | How foolish I was to think that, whatever one thought of the monarchy, however sad and exasperated one could be by the Windsors, coronation chicken was the kind of dish behind which most Britons could unite. If nothing else, I thought it captured our island story more than any amount of pageantry or grovelling. Curry is the national go-to dish, chicken our favourite meat, and the British palate tends more towards the sweet and creamy – at least in its savoury dishes – than any other country. |
| But I was wrong. I've been surprised how many enemies has coronation chicken. Tom Parker Bowles, who probably has more of a vested interest in this sort of thing than I do, tells me it's "a dog of a dish": far from being a cause for "celebration," he says, it's "rather punishment for sins of a past life". Even my republican comrades, whom I naively thought might be able to suspend their principles for a fine and delicious lunch, are unapologetic in their loathing for it. It can be delicious, of course. Felicity Cloake outlined its genesis last year, and you as readers were good enough not to throw it back in her face. Tim Hayward used it previously as the basis for a piece lamenting the disappearance of curry powder from the nation's supermarkets. I have little time for the monarchy but a lot for coronation chicken, and I'm not sure whether the slow revival of this dish is down to irony, pageantry, nostalgia or just distance from the greyscale 1950s. | But I was wrong. I've been surprised how many enemies has coronation chicken. Tom Parker Bowles, who probably has more of a vested interest in this sort of thing than I do, tells me it's "a dog of a dish": far from being a cause for "celebration," he says, it's "rather punishment for sins of a past life". Even my republican comrades, whom I naively thought might be able to suspend their principles for a fine and delicious lunch, are unapologetic in their loathing for it. It can be delicious, of course. Felicity Cloake outlined its genesis last year, and you as readers were good enough not to throw it back in her face. Tim Hayward used it previously as the basis for a piece lamenting the disappearance of curry powder from the nation's supermarkets. I have little time for the monarchy but a lot for coronation chicken, and I'm not sure whether the slow revival of this dish is down to irony, pageantry, nostalgia or just distance from the greyscale 1950s. |
| And in this current moment of national pride there seems to be a new interest in it. One upscale London ice cream bar is marking Her Maj's Joob with a coronation chicken ice cream concocted from cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric, Marsala-soaked sultanas and "a strong chicken jus". It sounds kaleidoscopically awful, but the place knows what it's doing, and I'd be surprised if the confection tasted like iced curry. | And in this current moment of national pride there seems to be a new interest in it. One upscale London ice cream bar is marking Her Maj's Joob with a coronation chicken ice cream concocted from cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric, Marsala-soaked sultanas and "a strong chicken jus". It sounds kaleidoscopically awful, but the place knows what it's doing, and I'd be surprised if the confection tasted like iced curry. |
| I'm even more confident in Burger King's offering, the "coronation chicken royale". BK assures the world that this includes "100% chicken breast [a percentage that somehow fails to fill me with confidence] coated and cooked in crispy crumbs with crunchy [too much alliteration] handpicked iceberg lettuce, topped in a delicious curry-style sauce and served on a long toasted sesame-seeded bun". A mildly spiced chicken burger, then: it's probably lovely. | I'm even more confident in Burger King's offering, the "coronation chicken royale". BK assures the world that this includes "100% chicken breast [a percentage that somehow fails to fill me with confidence] coated and cooked in crispy crumbs with crunchy [too much alliteration] handpicked iceberg lettuce, topped in a delicious curry-style sauce and served on a long toasted sesame-seeded bun". A mildly spiced chicken burger, then: it's probably lovely. |
| Elsewhere, Iceland are producing the impressively capitalised "Coronation Chicken Jubilee Pies", which sound weird – pies filled with creamy curry sound grimly Ginstersish. And Nigella Lawson, who may or may not be a republican, once updated coronation chicken for a Jubilee version which has inevitably surfaced a lot in recent days. | Elsewhere, Iceland are producing the impressively capitalised "Coronation Chicken Jubilee Pies", which sound weird – pies filled with creamy curry sound grimly Ginstersish. And Nigella Lawson, who may or may not be a republican, once updated coronation chicken for a Jubilee version which has inevitably surfaced a lot in recent days. |
| Her recipe is a useful reminder that so-called coronation chicken is itself the bastardised version of an older dish served at the coronation of Geroge V, and that plates such as this are generally improved by be adapted, and not by being squeezed into increasingly corrupted and uncomfortable formats. | Her recipe is a useful reminder that so-called coronation chicken is itself the bastardised version of an older dish served at the coronation of Geroge V, and that plates such as this are generally improved by be adapted, and not by being squeezed into increasingly corrupted and uncomfortable formats. |
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