By Keighley’s Mike Armstrong, an award-winning master baker with a big passion for baking...

WHETHER the country is celebrating a coronation or not, coronation chicken has woven its way into the very fabric of English cuisine.

So here's everything you need to know about the dish created just for our late Queen Elizabeth II. So what is coronation chicken? It's a yellow-coloured dish consisting of cold, cooked chicken in a creamy, slightly spicy sauce. It is commonly used as a sandwich filling, and also in salads.

It was created to be eaten at Queen Elizabeth II's coronation banquet in 1953 and is sometimes known by the name Poulet Reine Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth chicken).

The main ingredient is cold, cooked chicken, either poached or roasted chicken, with meat pulled off the bone. The other ingredients vary from recipe to recipe, but raisins or dried apricots are usually included, and the sauce should be cream or mayonnaise-based and spiced with curry powder, originally homemade curry paste. Other ingredients in the sauce range from onion, tomato puree and fresh herbs to red wine, sugar and lemon juice.

Coronation chicken was invented in the UK by Le Corden Bleu, a world renowned cookery school for the best education in anything culinary and used as a benchmark for excellence in the industry right back to the 16th century. The dish was thought to have been inspired by the jubilee celebrations of King George V, in 1933. The ingredients used were remarkable for the Queen's coronation time, with many of them only just becoming available, whilst the majority of the country was still under the restrictions of post-war rationing. Even for a royal banquet, imported food was limited.

Today it's quite surprising how coronation chicken has stood the test of time and it's fair to say it's still one of the crown jewels of British cooking, found in every supermarket ready meals section and in pre-packed sandwiches. Last year amateur baker Jemma Elvin won the Queen's Platinum Jubilee contest with her lemon Swiss roll and amaretto trifle. One thing is for sure, the new king has certainly inherited a ''foodie'' status from his mother and ancestors.

RECIPE

CORONATION CHICKEN

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons mayonnaise

1/2 teaspoon mild curry powder, to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons mango chutney

1-3 tablespoons sultanas, or to taste

500g/1lb shredded cooked chicken

Black pepper to season

Method:

1. Mix the mayo, curry powder, cinnamon, chutney and sultanas together and season with black pepper.

2. Add the shredded chicken and stir to coat.

3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of water to loosen if needed and serve as desired.

* Serving suggestions: Baked potatoes, fluffy white rice, cucumber sandwiches with a generous helping of coronation chicken, pillowy naan bread with iceberg lettuce or make it into whatever you want it to be. Best washed down with Earl Grey tea, gin, a classic English bitter/pale ale, a strong fruity rosé, sparkling cider or a lightly-oaked Chardonnay.