Queen Elizabeth's jubilee: Chef recalls coronation chicken origins

The woman who helped create coronation chicken said she worked on the recipe every day for a month in early 1953.

Angela Wood, 88, was a Cordon Bleu cookery school student when she was asked to perfect the dish for a Queen's Coronation Day banquet.

Developing the recipe was "enormous fun", according to Mrs Wood, from Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire.

She said she would be "happy to help" with the competition to find the perfect Platinum Jubilee Pudding.

The cookery school was asked to create a menu suitable for 350 foreign guests attending a banquet at Westminster School, London, after the Elizabeth II's coronation on 2 June 1953.

Founders Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume decided a cold chicken dish coated in a curried creamy sauce would be "really easy to serve", Mrs Wood said.

She was in her final term at the school's Winkfield Place college, near Windsor, Berkshire, when she was asked to fine-tune the recipe.

The brief was "something that had a bit of flavour, but not too much", to appeal to the banquet guests.

Most wartime rationing had ended but the availability of imported food was still limited and the ingredients had to be easily obtained in Britain.

Mrs Wood, who had just turned 19, said: "For a month or more, I was cooking a chicken a day and we had to alter the balance of the spices in the sauce to get it right."

The recipe they eventually came up with was cooked and served by Cordon Bleu staff and students a few months later at the banquet.

By this time, Mrs Wood had graduated from the school with a Cordon Bleu certificate.

Her sauce included freshly-ground spices, finely chopped onion, red wine, apricot puree, mayonnaise and cream and "is still the best one", according to the keen cook.

The competition to create a new pudding to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee runs until 4 February.

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