If you’re a monarchist or simply enjoy the tradition of the royal family, you may have heard of the coronation quiche, made with spinach, fava beans and tarragon.
The idea is for us to make it and share it with our friends and family during the coronation celebrations in May. King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla have just shared a recipe.
As dietitians, we are interested in the nutritional value of quiche. So we analyzed its contents and found that although it is quite a healthy dish, we could make a healthier version of it. Spoiler alert: the original recipe contains lard (pork fat).
We also discovered that we could make the quiche using cheaper or more readily available ingredients.
What exactly is a quiche?
Today, most people think of quiche as a French dish that is basically a savory pie. It usually consists of a pastry crust filled with a mixture of eggs, cream, and cheese, along with various other ingredients such as vegetables, meat, and herbs.
The quiche can be served hot or cold. You can have it for breakfast, lunch or dinner with a salad or vegetables.
How much does it cost?
Quiches are generally quite inexpensive to make. Most of the basic ingredients are cheap, and you can adapt the toppings based on what’s in the fridge or leftovers from recent meals.
Let’s see if this applies to the Coronation Quiche. We divide the costs into typical amounts you can buy in stores (eg, six eggs) and the costs of making the quiche (which only needs two eggs).
If you are making the quiche from scratch and need to buy the ingredients in quantities sold in stores, it will cost you almost 38 Australian dollars. While that may seem like a lot, you’ll have a few ingredients left over for another meal.
So how much do the ingredients for a quiche cost? We calculated it at $12 for the whole quiche, or $2 per serving. Reasonable enough!
Can you make it even cheaper?
Busy lives and the rising cost of living are top of mind right now. So here are a few things you can do to save time and money when making a coronation quiche:
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buy pre-made pastries. Keep the leaves you don’t use for the quiche in the freezer
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use private label products whenever possible
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consider vegetable shortening as it is a bit cheaper than lard
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buy seasonal vegetables and a farmer’s market
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can’t find tarragon? Try inexpensive, seasonal herbs like parsley, basil or rosemary
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can’t find beans? Try cheaper legumes like edamame or cannellini beans.
How nutritious is coronation quiche?
We also looked at the nutritional profile of Coronation Quiche. We have expressed the quantities for the whole quiche, and per serving.
The healthy… and the less healthy
This quiche contains high amounts of healthy protein and fiber from beans and eggs.
One serving of this quiche gives you about 18-25% of your daily protein and about 10% of your daily fiber needs, which is great.
But quiche has high levels of saturated fat, mainly because of its high amounts of lard, butter, and cream.
Saturated fats have been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular eventssuch as heart attacks and strokes because it raises levels of LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol).
This LDL cholesterol can build up in artery walls and form plaques, causing the arteries to harden over time and increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Thus, we want to avoid overeating large amounts of saturated fat, especially if we have cardiovascular disease. It’s also something we want to avoid if we’re trying to lose weight.
For an average Australian consuming around 9,000 kilojoules a day, the maximum recommended intake of saturated fat is around 24 grams.
A single serving of this quiche contains about 17g of saturated fat, which means there isn’t much room for other foods after you take a slice.
Maybe you better try this quiche instead, because it has half the amount of saturated fat as Coronation Quiche. You could even try a crustless quiche.
4 ways to make a healthier quiche
Here are some swaps to help make this recipe healthier:
1. Use low-fat options. If you’re watching your weight and looking to cut kilojoules from quiche, substitute whole cheddar cheese, milk, and double cream with lower-fat alternatives. This will reduce the total fat content per serving from 29.6g to 15g and save 112.2 kilojoules per serving
2. Ditch the lard. Replace lard with butter to save 15g of total fat per serving. This may change the texture of the quiche slightly but it will reduce the kilojoules
3. Use feta. Replace cheddar cheese with feta cheese, which has fewer kilojoules per gram
4. Add extra vegetables. This increases the fiber content of the quiche and adds lots of extra nutrients.
Correction: This story has been updated to set the price of butter at $3.70 per 250 grams. An error was made in the initial calculation.
