I thought the most thankless and debasing task in the country, where royal events were concerned, was poet laureate. You have to be medium thoughtful to be a reputable poet – sensitive, at least occasionally profound, interested in the big stuff – and then someone makes you write a poem about a baby. It’s like the world’s worst copywriting gig: trying to distinguish your product, this baby, from all other products, different babies, which are just as good. Investitures and coronations, even worse: they are already metaphors, and then some poor schmuck has to spin a load of meta-metaphors about them.
That was before Prue Leith, Tom Kerridge and Rick Stein unveiled their coronation recipes. The pressure’s not the same, because these weren’t solicited by the palace, but by a newspaper, and obviously (no offence) in a rush. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of the dishes, which all look fine – a kedgeree from Stein, a carrot hummus from Leith, a cheesecake from Kerridge – if a little underwhelming.
The problem is the precedent: coronation chicken, invented in 1953 by Rosemary Hume, performed some manoeuvres that are still incredible to this day. Originally, it deliberately put apricots, and nowadays, mango chutney, near meat and is still delicious. It explicitly prioritised traits other than taste – make-ahead potential so the cook could watch the telly, edible with only a fork so you can toast each other at the same time – and yet is still delicious. And it thriftily mixed chicken, almonds, curry powder, mayonnaise and colonialism in a way that OK, is delicious but would be quite a hard sell in 2023.
Today’s chefs were in a bind. There wasn’t a single reference they could make from across the Commonwealth that wouldn’t leave a bit of a dodgy taste in the mouth, whether it was delicious or not. The alternative of a random-fusion recipe, namechecking so many other nations that it didn’t reference imperialism at all and merely made us sound open-minded, would have lacked driving purpose. Yesterday, the palace released Coronation Quiche. They’ve gone full emerald isles, spinach, broad beans, tarragon, not a seasonal flavour in there you wouldn’t be able to find in your uncle’s allotment. It’s veggie, simple, and uncontroversial, but the equivalent, in poetry terms, would be: “There’s a new king/ and he seems nice.” You’re welcome, Simon Armitage.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
