Coronation Chicken Sandwich

There's half a roast chicken in the fridge from last night. The meat is cold and firm, the skin long gone, picked at while you were clearing up. This is where coronation chicken begins. Not with ambition, but with leftovers and a generous spoonful of mayonnaise.

The original was invented for the Queen's coronation in 1953, a cold dish for hundreds of guests at Westminster. What Constance Spry created for a palace banquet somehow ended up in every sandwich shop in Britain, which tells you something about the recipe's good sense. The version that survived is simpler than the original and, I think, better for it: cold chicken in a gentle, golden dressing, warm with curry powder, sweet from sultanas, sharpened with lemon. It tastes like a picnic even when you're eating it standing at the kitchen counter on a Tuesday.

Toast the curry powder in a dry pan for thirty seconds. That's the only cooking involved. The rest is stirring and tasting and piling the whole lot onto bread with the backbone to carry it. Butter both slices. A few watercress leaves if you've got them. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: chicken, curry mayo, sultanas, Saturday. It hasn't needed changing since.