Lamb replaces coronation chicken as dish fit for King

CORONATION Chicken may have been considered suitably extravagant in 1953, but seven decades on, palates have undoubtedly changed.

The public are now being urged to celebrate the King’s Coronation on May 6 with a roast rack of lamb with Asianstyle marinade or a strawberry and ginger trifle featuring no fewer than 26 ingredients.

A new Coronation website launched on Monday by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is designed to be a one-stop shop featuring everything the public needs to know about the day and how to mark it.

It includes a Spotify celebration playlist featuring 27 feel-good tracks by artists spanning the generations, from the Kinks to the Proclaimers, Tom Jones to Ed Sheeran. The inclusion of Dizzee Rascal, a grime artist convicted of assaulting his former fiancée, was blamed on an “error” after questions were asked and the rapper was swiftly removed.

The website is hosted by the Government, which is working in conjunction with Buckingham Palace.

It will be gradually built up over the coming weeks and, like the site created to mark Queen Elizabeth II’S Platinum Jubilee, will feature details of all community events taking place over the bank holiday weekend, information on how to take part and history about coronations past.

There will be homemade bunting ideas, recipe cards, children’s activity sheets and downloadable toolkits featuring the official Coronation emblem.

Information about how to host a street party or a Coronation Big Lunch on Sunday May 7, how to register an event and how to get involved in the volunteering initiative Big Help Out, on May 8, will also be added.

For now, the website features three recipes, including chef Ken Hom’s rack of lamb, Adam Handling’s trifle and Nadiya Hussain’s coronation aubergine.

All three are a far cry from the simple coronation chicken invented ahead of the late Queen’s coronation by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume, Le Cordon Bleu cookery school founders.

The trifle recipe involves making “Yorkshire parkin” before blooming gelatine leaves in an ice bath and warming strawberry juice before turning to the ginger custard, candied pistachios and roasted strawberries.

A DCMS spokesman said: “The playlist has been created to celebrate British and Commonwealth artists ahead of the upcoming Coronation.

“A track featuring Dizzee Rascal was included in error and as soon as this was identified it was removed.”