King Charles III's Coronation Quiche Is Getting Some Major Side-Eye
King Charles may have been ruling Brittania ever since September 2022, but his coronation won't take place until May 6, 2023. Still, that date is rapidly creeping up on us, and we've no doubt things are getting pretty crazy in the palace kitchens where everyone's busy preparing for such a momentous occasion. Just recently the Royal Family Twitter account announced the official Coronation Quiche, a dish that's touted as being the perfect entree for any coronation luncheons you might feel like hosting. (Even if they must take place in the early a.m. hours if you live in the U.S.).
While The Sydney Morning Herald says the recipe was selected due to the fact that it's meant to be adaptable, affordable, and good for sharing, not everyone seems too thrilled with it. TV host Jeremy Vine laments the lack of meat, while another person notes that a French dish like quiche may not be the best choice for a British monarch. Other Twitter users object to the use of lard, which is made with pork fat and thus not something either Jews or Muslims can eat, as well as tarragon, which, if fresh, is not necessarily easy to obtain or affordable. Broad (aka fava) beans, too, are seen by some as an odd inclusion. One person says of the recipe, "It feels it was forgotten about and an intern knocked it up on the weekend," while another speculates that the recipe's real intent is "Training people for when rationing is re-introduced."
Will the Coronation Quiche be as popular as earlier royal recipes?
The Coronation Quiche has some pretty big, er, plates to fill, following on the heels of the coronation chicken introduced when Queen Elizabeth II took the crown back in 1953. The original coronation chicken was cooked in creamy curry sauce and served alongside a mixture of rice, pimentos, and peas. Over the years, however, coronation chicken recipes have evolved (or devolved, as some might have it) into more of a curry-flavored mayonnaise-based chicken salad made with raisins.
2022's Jubilee Pudding doesn't seem to have been quite so popular. Rather than being created in the palace kitchens, or even at Le Cordon Bleu's London cooking school as was the case with Coronation Chicken, this dessert was dreamed up by a copywriter who won a cooking competition. It proved to be a complicated concoction of sliced jelly rolls filled with lemon curd and topped with candied citrus peel, amaretti cookies, lemon custard, mandarin coulis, whipped cream, white chocolate, and something called St Clement's jelly (basically a mixture of orange and lemon Jell-O). One person, comparing this dessert to the Coronation Quiche, speculates that the latter will be "As bad as that orange jelly + lemon swiss roll Jubilee Pudding last year." While this doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of either dish, it may be good news for the quiche if the bar for royal recipes has been lowered in the last 75+ years.