Buckingham Palace unleashes the quiche
Times are lean, so the King has turned to beans. Quite literally. Ahead of King Charles’s May 6 coronation, Buckingham Palace released a special recipe to mark the occasion.
What did Charles and Camilla, the Queen Consort, select? A meatless quiche filled with — wait for it — beans, spinach, tarragon and enough fats to give you a heart attack by just looking at the recipe.
The royal concoction has received mixed — that’s being generous — reviews.
UK tabloid paper Metro gathered thoughts from its staff. One employee described the quiche as, “the food equivalent of getting caught in a grey, April drizzle: cold, unpleasant and out-of-place.” Another said, “My first thought was to puke.”
One of the dish’s few endorsements came from celebrity chef Prue Leith of “The Great British Bake Off,” who praised the baked dish as “absolutely delicious.”
That’s quite the rave review from an authoritative source, but it also warrants a big asterisk: the quiche Leith tested was presented by none other than Prince Edward, the King’s brother. It would have been next to impossible for her to offer anything but glowing remarks.
So amid all the hubbub, I decided to test the recipe myself and offer an objective opinion.
Let’s start with the beans. (The recipe calls for either the soy or fava variety.) First off, why? There are 60 grams of beans in this quiche, ensuring every mouthful is overwhelmed with sandy, starchy overtones, no matter how you slice it.
Then, there’s the tarragon — one tablespoon, to be exact. If you can get past the beans, you’re subsequently hit with the herb’s pungent licorice flavour.
All that is suspended in a wet spinach custard, filled with so much milk, cream and cheap cheddar cheese that it barely sets into something resembling quiche.
As for the recipe, it’s simple to follow, though the instructions don’t allocate nearly enough time to blind bake the pastry. (That’s probably why almost everyone is saying the crust, topped with that milky liquid, is such a soggy mess.)
If you’ve made it this far through the review, you’re probably now wondering why the King would choose such an unappetizing dish to mark his special day.
Alas, taste is subjective, and believe it or not, it does appear that the King enjoys this recipe and isn’t just trying to torture his subjects.
“It’s no surprise that King Charles III has shared Coronation quiche to celebrate his Coronation,” former royal chef Darren McGrady tweeted after the dish was revealed. “Made this for him many times.”
The recipe, rife with symbolism and specially selected by the King and Queen Consort, is said to reflect not just their tastes but values.
“Throughout his public life, the King has emphasized the importance of sustainability, and certainly a vegetarian dish fits in with his wider philosophy about the importance of being in harmony with nature,” Toronto-based historian, author and royal commentator Carolyn Harris told me over the phone.
(Though Buckingham Palace’s original recipe isn’t vegetarian as the crust is made from lard, it notes that you can also use pre-made short crust pastry, of which there are vegetarian varieties.)
In short, this coronation quiche is supposed to be affordable, accessible and sustainable — something that reflects the times. At least that’s what the Royal Family, estimated to be worth $28 billion, was trying to achieve.
But it doesn’t take long to realize this is just another half-baked royal attempt to connect with the masses. Upon closer inspection, it’s a recipe in which its results so obviously contradict its intentions.
Beyond the irony that the King selected a German dish popularized by France to commemorate his British coronation, it’s almost laughable when you realize that there’s a national egg shortage in the UK, making that key ingredient — a favourite of the King’s, don’t forget — nearly impossible to source. Talk about accessibility.
Yet with days to go before the coronation, the jury is still out on whether the King’s quiche will land with the people. Like his reign, the King has large shoes to fill with this special recipe. His mother’s coronation chicken, unveiled in 1953, has remained enduringly popular some seven decades later.
My verdict? I’m with the UK tabloids: Buckingham Palace’s quiche is the King’s sordid and dour attempt to craft a dish that connects with us commoners. It is, put simply, a coronation abomination.