At new opening Nessa, executive chef Tom Cenci is doing his own special-occasion dishes — coronation roast chicken, where the roasted bird comes with a sauce of apricots, raisins, almonds, with curry scraps and vadouvan spice, and a pudding of jelly and cream. But the Standard decided to ask the chef if he might be able to attempt the official coronation quiche recipe (we’d have only messed it up ourselves). In the video above, and with thoughts below, here’s what writers David Ellis and Josh Barrie made of it.
David’s experience
It must be strange to be Mark Flanagan. The Queen’s chef for some 20-odd years, Flanagan has become something of a royal institution all of his own. He’s cooked for presidents and peacemakers, catered for visiting royalty, did the wedding for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge when they were just leaving their Will and Kate phase. When Charles became King, Flanagan stuck at the gig; same job, new boss.
And while granted, cooking for Obama likely had the old nerves trembling, this year surely induced the jitters like never before. With a new man at the top came a new challenge: invent the official dish for the King’s coronation.
It is not such a simple task: the simple-minded inclination is to think the royals exist on obscure game birds and the odd bump of caviar. Not so, and a coronation dish has to capture the time, be accessible, appeal to many. And so Flanagan, presumably having racked his brains and thumbed every last page of his countless cookbooks, came up with… quiche.
Being underwhelmed feels something of a hallmark of Britishness, so it’s suitable in that sense. And quiche being a French tart fits loosely with the light tradition of coronation food; when the Queen was crowned in 1953, her dish — coronation chicken — was dreamt up by two English cooks who were involved with (French) cookery school Le Cordon Bleu; its proper name is Poulet Reine Elizabeth.
Flanagan has riffed on the wallpaper-like official coronation invite by taking the garden route: the quiche is one of spinach and broad beans, and once sliced — and again just like the invite — looks rather like an Osborne & Little design.
To give it a go, Cenci was the right man to rope in; wrecking the recipe ourselves wouldn’t have been giving it a fair shake. What arrives looks rather good, just the thing for an elaborate picnic. It is light on the egg — just as well, eggs can do one — and arrives creamy but with a hit of tarragon that reads like spice. Cenci of course has done an expert job, but he can only work with the recipe as it is. It’s fine, perfectly nice; your mate’s dull partner who nobody minds coming to things, but everyone half-forgets to ever invite.
If you are a dab hand with a quiche anyway, give it a go. If you’re hosting a big old do for the long weekend, it might not be the showstopper wanted. As Prince, Charles never minding ruffling feathers for what he believed in, but the dish that marks his official crowning as King is inoffensive, uncontroversial. I wonder if there’s a metaphor here.
Josh’s experience
If I were fortunate enough to be invited to Buckingham Palace for an elaborate lunch, I’m not sure how I’d feel about a quiche centrepiece. It would be unexpected at the very least. An ornamental table of gilded finery, Champagne, fine chandeliers, tailcoats fluttering and diamonds on wrists, and then a quiche. There it is, a circle of baked eggs in the middle of the table, crisp pastry groaning under the weight of heavy cream. Hardly glamorous.
But I respect the King and Queen for choosing a quiche. The dish might be considered unifying and frugal. It is something many will enjoy.
After all, as we are in a cost-of-living crisis, we are now in the sweet embrace of spring and picnics are coming. There are few more enjoyable ways to spend an afternoon than sitting in one of London’s world-beating parks to pop bottles, lay out a blanket, kick a ball about and open a snack-filled bag. Here we have an opportunity for sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, carrot batons and hummus, cherry tomatoes, crisps, and chubby slices of quiche.
Quiche is one of those dishes that edges towards elegance but is by its very nature basic and accessible. Eggs aren’t cheap these days but eggs are no venison. Cream has gone up in price but is some way off creme fraiche that tops, say, smoked salmon. And so I suppose quiche is an affordable connector to royalty, with a flabby hint of regality, and over the coronation weekend that is what so many will be vying for.
The coronation quiche is underwhelming but pleasant. Personally, I’d add another egg to the recipe, but hey ho, I’m an egg lover, no doubt about it. It’s creamy, tarragon heavy — a garden of a dish with notes of Charles and Camilla’s floral invitations. They are environmentalists and so a green quiche works.
The spinach and broad beans? Sure, I’m partial to both, especially the latter, seasonal as they are. This is a meadowy quiche, one for on a sunny day.
Is it the grand centrepiece it is billed to be? Will it be remembered in 70 years like its predecessor, coronation chicken, invented way back in 1953? I shouldn’t think so. It’s a quiche. But it’s a decent one, and we’ll leave it at that.
