I made coronation quiche, the royal recipe devised in honor of King Charles III, and I'm not convinced it'll become a national dish

Buckingham Palace released a video to demonstrate how to make coronation quiche correctly. You can watch it here.

It's worth noting that Insider published a multi-part investigation into Palace pay ranges during the Queen's reign, and produced a searchable database of positions.

As of 2019, a demi chef de partie in the Royal Household's department earned £22,000 (around $27,000) a year.

I spent roughly $13 on ingredients, including a backup shortcrust pastry, which turned out to be a wise decision.

Here's the full ingredients list. I've converted the UK units and ingredients to US ones in parentheses, but there's some rounding involved — so please take this as a loose guide only.

Pastry:

• 125g (4.4 oz or 1 cup) plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• 25g (0.9 oz) cold butter, diced
• 25g (0.9 oz) lard
• 2 tablespoons milk
• Or 1 x 250g (8.9 oz) block of ready-made shortcrust pastry

Filling:

• 125ml (0.5 cup) milk
• 175ml (0.75 cup) double (heavy) cream
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
• Salt and pepper
• 100g (1 1/4 cup) grated Cheddar cheese
• 180g (6.4 oz) cooked spinach, lightly chopped
• 60g (2 oz or 0.25 cup) cooked broad beans (fava beans)

I wondered if the new recipe will take the same place in British people's hearts as coronation chicken, a cold dish that combines chicken with dried fruits and a creamy curry sauce.

Historian Barry Turner wrote that "though simple to prepare, coronation chicken was made exotic by the rarity of fresh curry spices, not to mention whipped cream, in austerity Britain."

It became easier to put together in later years, with simplified spices and the introduction of intensively-reared chicken, he wrote.

Source: "Thorns in the Crown, The Story of the Coronation and What it meant for Britain."

Supermarkets in the UK now sell containers of coronation chicken as sandwich fillers, a far cry from its royal start.

For a more authentic version, you can check out Lauren Edmonds' attempt to cook the original recipe here.

I was determined to try to make the pastry myself, so I cubed the butter and lard and added it to the sifted flour and salt.

I rubbed it all together to get the "sandy, breadcrumb-like" texture the recipe describes. It's important to start out with cold butter.

Though the recipe seems vegetarian, lard contains pork fat, meaning that both veggies and non-pork-eaters won't be able to partake unless they replace it with another ingredient.

Just as I was congratulating myself on my crumby mixture, I got confused, adding the 125ml of milk meant for the filling, rather than the 2 tablespoons meant for the dough.

Pastry attempt No.1 was a write-off.

This was even more concerning given that the recipe calls for a 20-cm pie tin, and I had only been able to find an 18-cm one.

Anyway, time to push ahead.

Having preheated the oven to 190° C (375° F) I blind baked the pastry with baking beads for 15 minutes.

Sadly it came out as I feared — with dangerous gaps that my filling would surely spill through.

Attempt No.2 was also a bust.

Apparently, I'm not alone. The Guardian's review also recommends that inexperienced chefs make double the amount of pastry.

Two hours behind schedule I switched to the shop-bought pastry.

I lined the tin, rested it in the fridge for 45 minutes, and once again blind baked it, after which I turned the oven down to 160° C (320° F) as the recipe required.

The recipe calls for cooked beans, but as I was using tinned beans they seemed soft enough already. I cooked down the spinach and made the mixture of egg, cream, milk, chopped tarragon and seasoning.

I squeezed plenty of water out of the spinach so that it wasn't soggy going in the quiche later.

If I made this again, I'd probably use gently cooked fresh beans.

The recipe calls for Cheddar cheese, which has a wide range of flavor profiles from really mature and sharp, through to very mild.

I opted for a medium strength, though next time I'd consider adding a small amount of stronger cheese.

While ovens vary, the recipe calls for 20-25 minutes cooking time.

It's hard to say if it's more or less convincing as a crown than it was as a pastry crust.

Now it was just a matter of waiting a bit for it to cool — cutting a slice immediately would have been messy, as the filling firms up as it cools.

I felt a bit guilty about all the food I'd wasted, so I used the remaining dough to make some little tarts with spare spinach, cheese, and the coronation chicken.

I scarfed them down while I waited for the main attraction to cool.

After all that effort, was it a slice fit for a king (or queen)?

The quiche tasted warm, and leaned heavily on spring-like flavours — with the herbiness of the tarragon and the full flavor of the spinach dominating.

The egg was creamy and light, bringing it all together, but I couldn't really taste much of the cheese.

It's easy to picture the dish being served at a posh picnic.

I tried the quiche again the next day, and handed it out to neighbors, family, and a plumber who stopped by my place — to mixed reviews.

"It's definitely a step or two up from the standard," the plumber said.

My neighbors enjoyed it, but when pressed said they probably wouldn't seek it out again.

According to my mum, the quiche needed more seasoning, and was "quite posh and bland, or you could say delicate." She recommended more cheese as well.

Given that the British palate is not known for its subtlety, I doubt that people who like a hearty, cheesy quiche would cook this twice.

All in all, I'm not convinced King Charles III's coronation quiche is going to be a national crowd-pleaser that stands the test of time.