Swept up in Queen Elizabath’s Platinum Jubilee, writer and Anglophile, Betsa Marsh, shares her tales of finding just the right Coronation Chicken Salad recipe. She created it ahead of a Jubilee luncheon she was hosting, where amusing solar panel-powered, waving Queen Elizabeth’s looked on (gifts from friends over the years). Enjoy the history, trials and tribulations, and then her very doable version of the classic recipe, perhaps more tolerable for modern palates. 

Save this Anglo-American version of a Coronation Chicken Salad recipe to Pinterest so you can make it anytime. Photos by Betsa Marsh. Graphic by Real Food Traveler.

Hungry for more? Here are some tips, recipes, and inspiration to honor the Queen.

The union jacks are fluttering, and the invitations are flying. There can’t be too many celebrations to mark the longest royal reign in British history.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee kicked off in June with a grand four-day blast throughout the UK and the Commonwealth, from superstars singing before Buckingham Palace to villagers setting up picnics in the High Street. The party will continue for months, and both the Queen’s loyal subjects and avid supporters on this side of the pond hope that we’ll all be celebrating together again on Coronation Day, July 2, 2023, the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.

As Jane Austen so brilliantly said in “Emma,” “One cannot have too large a party.”

An Anglophile to my core, I started following the royals as soon as I could hold a book. My DNA is 94% British Isles — dare I suggest possibly a higher percentage than her Majesty’s, with her German heritage?

The House of Windsor is flat-out fascinating, but I’ve also had plenty of time for all the British monarchs from Ethelred the Unready to Elizabeth I to Victoria. When archaeologists discovered the body of King Richard III underneath a car park in Leicester, I couldn’t wait to hop on a plane and interview the team about their astonishing royal find.

After decades throwing bashes to celebrate royal birthdays, royal weddings, royal babies and just royal excess, I have the paraphernalia. Lots of flags, lots of bunting and china glowing with royal visages.

But what didn’t I have this time around for the Platinum Jubilee? The perfect Coronation Chicken recipe.

I wanted a Coronation Chicken Salad recipe that will carry us for the entire year of celebrations and beyond—British home cooks and restaurants whip up Coronation Chicken whenever the mood strikes. I wanted a recipe worthy of a woman who accepted a job she didn’t plan on and has done it unfailingly for 70 years, retirement never an option. A chicken salad to make Queen Elizabeth II proud.

Hungry for more? Here’s another classic English recipe, Welsh Rarebit.

May her majesty be as proud as Angela Wood still is, 69 years after creating the original Coronation Chicken as a young Cordon Bleu cookery student. When she met the queen recently at Windsor Castle and told her majesty about her role in the recipe, you could see Wood’s pride aglow on her face. Wood told the BBC that her cooking school instructors tasked her with creating a chicken salad recipe fit for a queen, to be served to 350 foreign guests at Westminster School, London, after the queen’s coronation. The recipe also needed to be accessible to home cooks, with ingredients easily available in a country not long out of wartime rationing. Wood roasted a chicken every day for a month, bless her heart, to try new spice combinations. Finally, her Coronation Chicken was ready for the banquet and the British public.

All these years later, I wanted to be authentic to the last grain of salt. Then I read the recipe.

And reread it. Put it aside, then read it again.

Surely not. Surely I’m not supposed to sauté onion with tomato paste, red wine, curry paste and lemon juice, then blend that mixture with canned apricots and whipping cream. If it’s this off-putting on paper, how on earth is it going to taste?

But I’m on a quest for my queen, so I dutifully mince a shallot from our garden and sauté tomato paste in Cabernet, then purée canned apricots and scoop apricot jam. Finally, I hold my breath and stir it all together. I blend it with my organic chicken cubes and hope that the flavor center in my brain, silently shrieking, can be overridden and that this Coronation Chicken will be delicious.

I take a bite. Crikey, as the Brits say.

Could tastes really have changed this much in seven decades?
This sends me back to the other Coronation Chicken recipes I’d scanned online, all veering to super-sweetness. Modern cooks have left the red wine, tomato paste and whipping cream combo back in the 1950s.

Some recipes are so basic it’s nearly sacrilege: Chop some chicken, toss on a bottle of mango chutney, and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got Coronation Chicken. Surely there’s something perfect in between.

After some experimentation—no, not 30 chickens in 30 days, but a dedicated trial and error—I’ve created an Anglo-American Coronation Chicken Salad recipe that pleased my guests at our Platinum Jubilee luncheon. And one I plan to whip up whenever we’re craving chicken salad between now and Coronation Day 2023.

Anglo-American Coronation Chicken Salad 

This is a flexible recipe easily modified to taste.

Makes 12 generous portions.

Ingredients:
4 pounds/12 cups roasted organic chicken breast, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 shallot, minced
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 1/2 cups ( 2 jars) mango chutney
1/4 tsp curry powder, more to taste
1 cup golden raisins
4-8 canned apricots, puréed, adding apricots to taste
1/2 cup apricot preserves, to taste
3 limes, using both juice and zest
1 1/2 cups toasted sliced almonds (optional)
12 puff pastry shells to create vol-au-vents
Parsley sprigs for garnish

Directions:
Bake the puff pastry shells as directed on the package and cool thoroughly. Carefully remove and save the tops to create the vol-au-vents.

In a large bowl, mix together the Greek yogurt, shallot, chutney, curry powder, raisins, puréed apricots and apricot preserves.

Add the lime zest and juice to create a rather thin dressing. Pour the dressing over the chicken and mix well. Chill. Add almonds and stir just before serving.

Fill the base of each vol-au-vent pastry shell with chicken salad, overflowing a bit. Top with the pastry lid and garnish with a parsley sprig.

Note: If you like a zingier taste, mix only the yogurt, mango chutney, curry powder, lime juice and zest with the chicken. Taste. To make the dressing sweeter, slowly add the pureed apricots and apricot preserves to taste.

The Queen supervises mise en place for her new Anglo-American Coronation Chicken. Photo by Betsa Marsh.

The Queen checks out cubed organic chicken breast on the cutting board. Photo by Betsa Marsh.

A first vol-au-vent is ready for a Platinum Jubilee luncheon. Photo by Betsa Marsh.

-Story by Betsa Marsh

Hungry for more? Enjoy Betsa’s article about the Lobster Trail.

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