How to make the perfect chicken à la king – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect ...

What could be more fitting for the coronation than a bowl (or vol-au-vent) you can eat with one hand while holding a glass of bubbly in the other?

Despite its regal branding, chicken à la king reminds me of school dinners. How the mighty have fallen: the boozy, truffle-laced treat of the early 20th century reduced to rubbery chicken in a floury white sauce by its close. But, though the dish seems to have been created in the restaurants of the US rather than the royal palaces of Europe (the legendary New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne remembered it as “standard party fare” during his 1920s Southern childhood), it’s still a sound choice for coronation celebrations.

First, because the name fits, second, because both chicken and cream are perennial crowdpleasers, and third, because it’s perfect buffet fare – as the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Food and Drink in America notes, in its heyday, the dish was particularly popular in tearooms, because it “could be eaten in a most ladylike way without picking up a knife”. Which also makes it ideal for consumption around the television set, or at a street party, should either of those figure in your plans. And if you’re ignoring the whole affair, you can, as Colman Andrews suggests in his book Everything on the Table, call it “diced chicken in egg-thickened white-pepper sherry-cream sauce with pimentos and mushrooms on toast, if it makes you feel more contemporary”. Then have it for dinner instead.

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