kings coronation quiche

I’d never made a quiche before, which seemed like an excellent qualification for attempting the King’s coronation quiche. I like eating quiche. I particularly like quiche Lorraine. Spinach and broad beans sounded rather less exciting, but I was willing to give this one a chance.

This was my May 2023 attempt at the recipe shared for the coronation celebrations. The Royal Family’s recipe announcement identifies spinach, broad beans and tarragon as its main flavours. The tarragon worried me most. I’d struggled to find it, wasn’t sure I’d ever eaten it and discovered, once I opened the packet, that it smelled of aniseed. I hate aniseed. We were off to a promising start.

The pastry had a gap

I bought ready-made shortcrust pastry for this. I’d made pastry from scratch plenty of times, and I hate doing it. Using a block from the shop saved me that job, and I was pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it was to work with. Unfortunately, straightforward pastry still had to deal with me.

The recipe specified a particular size of tin. I had one tin, the same one I’d used for a Bakewell tart, and I hadn’t measured it. That was the tin I used. When I rolled out the pastry, it almost covered everything. Almost. I patched the gaps with spare bits, trimmed the edges and put the case in the fridge. I remembered that you were meant to leave some excess pastry, although I couldn’t remember why.

The vegetables caused a different problem. The recipe wanted cooked spinach and cooked broad beans, but I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to weigh them before or after cooking. I sauteed the spinach, microwaved the frozen beans and ended up being far less precise than the recipe deserved. The amount of spinach I had didn’t seem to be enough when I started adding it to the case.

While the pastry blind-baked with baking beans in it, I got the filling ready. This part involved milk, double cream, eggs, cheese and the suspicious tarragon. I could smell the aniseed as soon as I opened the herbs. I added it despite the smell. Once everything was in the pastry case, it actually looked like proper food. I was quite pleased with myself.

Then the filling escaped

That confidence didn’t last. The quiche leaked in the oven, and I was furious. After the full baking time given in the recipe, the filling still wobbled like jelly. It stopped leaking as the filling began to set. I let it rest before trying to remove it from the tin, which was another struggle. Part of it had stuck.

Then I spotted an exposed bit at the side and remembered the gap I’d been trying to patch earlier. I thought that explained where the filling had found its way out. My almost-covered tin was coming back to haunt me. The quiche looked wet, too, and my instinct was that it needed longer, even though I’d already followed the stated baking time.

Cutting into it confirmed that I wasn’t happy with the centre. Back into the oven it went. I didn’t have a neat extra cooking time to report. I cooked it for quite a lot longer, waited for it to set and let it rest again. By that stage I was wondering whether I’d gone too far the other way and overcooked it. This was very much a first attempt, rather than a beautifully timed demonstration.

Alanna holds up a slice of her spinach quiche, with the remaining quiche on a chopping board
My finished quiche and a slice showing the spinach filling. The centre was still softer than I’d expected.

I was wrong about the tarragon

The first taste was much better than I’d expected. The herb I’d been worried about actually worked. There was a little of that aniseed flavour, but it fitted with the rest of the filling instead of ruining it. I liked the spinach, the beans were fine and, after all the trouble in the oven, I had made something I wanted to keep eating.

The texture was still mushier than I’d hoped. I prefer cold quiche anyway, and I thought a spell in the fridge might improve it. That was an expectation at the end of the attempt, though. I hadn’t chilled it and tested the result yet, so I can’t give the fridge credit for rescuing it.

Was it better than quiche Lorraine? Probably not. Was I happy with my first-ever quiche? Yes. The pastry needed more care, the timing didn’t work out neatly for me and the filling wasn’t quite where I wanted it, but the flavour was a pleasant surprise. I’d started out doubtful about a vegetable quiche and ended up ready to eat the rest of it. That counts for something.

Watch my full coronation quiche attempt on YouTube.