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Coronation Chicken: The UK Culinary Classic Fit for a Queen

Angela Wood helped invent Coronation Chicken to mark the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Chris Radburn AFP
Angela Wood helped invent Coronation Chicken to mark the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Chris Radburn AFP
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Coronation Chicken: The UK Culinary Classic Fit for a Queen

Angela Wood helped invent Coronation Chicken to mark the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Chris Radburn AFP
Angela Wood helped invent Coronation Chicken to mark the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Chris Radburn AFP

Angela Wood proudly recalls the poached chicken in creamy curry sauce recipe that she helped create for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, and which has since become a British culinary classic. Coronation Chicken -- also called "Poulet Reine Elizabeth" -- is now so popular it can be found in supermarket ready-meals, pre-packed sandwiches and on the pages of many recipe books, said AFP. "It's not the same recipe though. It's just mayonnaise with a bit of curry put in," Wood, 89, says laughing as she talks about some modern versions of the famous dish. Wood was only 19 when, as a student at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Winkfield, near Windsor, west of London, she was asked to perfect a recipe created by the school's director, Constance Spry. Spry had been given the task of putting on a banquet for foreign dignitaries after the coronation on June 2, 1953. "Constance Spry walked into the kitchen and said 'this is something we're thinking of doing for the coronation... we'll keep testing it until we get it right,'" said Wood at her home in the picturesque market town of Kimbolton in eastern England. "Knowing that it was going to be foreign dignitaries from all over the world, she decided that it had to be slightly spicy but not over spicy," she told AFP. Another constraint was that the dish had to be prepared in advance so had to be cold, added Wood, looking elegant with short white hair, fuchsia-coloured lips and a matching cardigan. The ingredients also had to be available in the UK, where, even for a royal banquet, imported food was limited after World War II because of rationing. - A strange mix - So Wood set to work in the kitchen, experimenting "two or three times a week, for possibly three or four weeks". "We were forever boiling chickens," she said. After constantly tweaking the ingredients, they found the right balance. Wood showed AFP the original recipe, published in an old edition of the British gastronomic classic "The Constance Spry Cookery Book". The chicken should be poached with a bouquet garni, while the sauce is a reduction of chopped onions, curry powder, tomato puree, red wine and lemon juice. The mixture is then cooled and added to mayonnaise, lightly whipped cream and apricot puree. "It's a strange mixture. And people do the first bit (curry powder and wine) and taste it and it's just so horrible and strong," she laughs. "I mean you can't believe that it can be right." Wood is sometimes asked why she didn't use mango, as is used in many of today's versions of the classic. "Well, we didn't have mangoes..., we didn't have Greek yoghurt," she said, adding that "nowadays people add all sorts of things". The dish was described on the banquet menu, written in French, as "Poulet Reine Elizabeth" and was served to the 350 foreign guests with a rice salad containing peas and herbs. It followed a tomato and tarragon soup and trout. Strawberry galette was served for pudding, all washed down with Moselle and Champagne wines. - Platinum pudding - Wood never pursued a professional career as a cook, and instead ran the family farm after she got married. But for special occasions, she and her daughter still sometimes prepare the recipe that has assured her place in British culinary history. She said she is "honored" to have helped create the British classic, which earned her a reception with the Queen at the royal estate in Sandringham in February to mark her 70 years on the throne. To celebrate the monarch's record-breaking Platinum Jubilee, which will see four days of celebrations in early June, Britons have been invited to create a dessert for the Queen. The best entry is due to be announced on Thursday. "It's quite surprising how it (Coronation Chicken) certainly stood the test of time and I hope whoever wins the pudding, the same thing happens," said Wood. It would be a fitting tribute to "the most incredible reign" and a woman who "dedicated her whole life to the country", she adds.

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Cactus Pear Is a Crop with Potential in Italy’s Parched South and Beyond

Prickly pear cactus plantation is seen in Tepeteopan, state of Puebla, Mexico January 16, 2020. Picture taken January 16, 2020. (Reuters)
Prickly pear cactus plantation is seen in Tepeteopan, state of Puebla, Mexico January 16, 2020. Picture taken January 16, 2020. (Reuters)
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Cactus Pear Is a Crop with Potential in Italy’s Parched South and Beyond

Prickly pear cactus plantation is seen in Tepeteopan, state of Puebla, Mexico January 16, 2020. Picture taken January 16, 2020. (Reuters)
Prickly pear cactus plantation is seen in Tepeteopan, state of Puebla, Mexico January 16, 2020. Picture taken January 16, 2020. (Reuters)

Global warming, drought and plant disease pose a growing threat to agriculture in Italy's arid south, but a startup founded by a former telecoms manager believes it has found a solution: Opuntia Ficus, better known as the cactus pear.

Andrea Ortenzi saw the plant's potential 20 years ago when working for Telecom Italia in Brazil, where it is widely used as animal feed. On returning to Italy he began looking at ways to turn his intuition into a business opportunity.

He and four friends founded their company, called Wakonda, in 2021, and began buying land to plant the crop in the southern Puglia region where the traditionally dominant olive trees had been ravaged by an insect-borne disease called Xylella.

The damage from the plant disease has been compounded by recurring droughts and extreme weather in the last few years all over Italy's southern mainland and islands, hitting crops from grapes to citrus fruits.

Ortenzi is convinced the hardy and versatile cactus pear, otherwise called the prickly pear or, in Italy, the Indian fig, can be a highly profitable solution yielding a raft of products such as soft drinks, flour, animal feed and biofuel.

The Italian businessman is far from alone in seeing the potential of the plant, whose cultivation is expanding in hot and dry regions around the world.

"As an industry, cactus pear production is growing rather quickly, especially for fodder use and as a source of biofuel," said Makiko Taguchi, agricultural officer at the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome.

MULTIPLE USES

The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking.

In Tunisia, where it covers around 12% of cultivated land, second only to olive trees, the cactus pear is a major source of income for thousands, particularly women who harvest and sell the fruit.

In Brazil, which has the world's largest production, it is mainly cultivated in the north-east for fodder, while Peru and Chile use it to extract a red dye known as Cochineal, used in food and cosmetic production.

Sportswear group Adidas and carmaker Toyota have recently shown interest in using the cactus to produce plant-based leather sourced mainly from Mexico.

The cactus pear is not yet included in the FAO's agricultural output statistics, but Taguchi cited the rapid expansion of CactusNet, a contact network of cactus researchers and businesses worldwide which she coordinates.

The FAO launched the group online in 2015 with 69 members. It now has 933 members in 82 countries. The plant, native to desert areas of south and north America, thrives in the increasingly arid conditions of Italy's south, and needs ten times less water than maize, a comparable crop whose byproducts also include animal feed and methane.

So far Wakonda, an American Indian word meaning nature's omnipresent creative force, has planted just 10 hectares of cactus with 40,000 plants per hectare, but Ortenzi plans to plant 300 hectares by the end of 2025, and he is thinking big.

Of the roughly 100,000 hectares of olive trees destroyed by Xylella in southern Puglia, only 30,000 will be replanted in the same way, he told Reuters in an interview.

"Potentially 70,000 could be planted with prickly pears," he said.

In the long run the possibilities could be even greater, Ortenzi said, considering more than a million hectares of arable land have been abandoned in Italy in recent decades as climate change has made it more difficult to produce traditional crops.

WAKONDA'S MODEL

Wakonda's business model discards the fruit and focuses instead on the prickly pads, which are pressed to yield a juice used for a highly nutritious, low-calorie energy drink. The dried out pads are then processed to produce a light flour for the food industry or a high-protein animal feed.

Wakonda's circular, ecological production system also includes "biodigester" tanks in which the waste from the output cycle is transformed into methane gas used as a bio-fuel either on site or sold.

The company, which now has 37 shareholders, is in contact with mayors, firms and universities to develop its products.

Under Ortenzi's business plan, rather than buying up land to plant the cactus, Wakonda aims to persuade farmers of its potential and then license out to them, in return for royalties, all the equipment and know-how required to exploit it.

"The land remains yours, you convert it to prickly pears and I guarantee to buy all your output for at least 15 years," Ortenzi said.