What Is Coronation Chicken? The History Behind the Dish.

No matter how you feel about King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s recently revealed signature quiche, it seems unlikely to eclipse the most famous coronation dish of all — coronation chicken.

Created for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the posh, delicately flavored chicken has, like Britain itself, changed a bit since. What was originally an aristocratic paragon of classic French technique has been democratized into a weeknight-easy chicken salad. Though enormously popular in Britain as a sandwich filling and baked-potato topper, this ocher-tinted, raisin-studded dish would be unrecognizable to any of the 350 dignitaries who partook of its regal ancestor.

Recipe: Coronation Chicken Salad

The original, developed at the Cordon Bleu culinary school in London, was called “poulet Reine Elizabeth.” A dish of cold poached chicken in a rose-hued sauce made from red wine, mayonnaise, whipped cream, apricot purée and a faint whiff of curry powder, it was served alongside a pea-studded rice salad at a coronation banquet to the queen’s honored guests (but not likely to the queen herself).

Find more coronation recipes on New York Times Cooking.

Sejal Sukhadwala, a London-based food writer and author of “The Philosophy of Curry,” describes that dish as shaped by French cuisine with a nod toward colonial India, and based on the jubilee chicken created in 1935 for George V, who, like his grandmother Queen Victoria, had a penchant for curries.

“The curry powder in coronation chicken was probably an acknowledgment of the influence of the empire and a tribute to the two previous curry-loving monarchs,” Ms. Sukhadwala wrote in an email.