With celebrity chefs so prominent in British life these days, one can't help wondering if Queen Elizabeth sought the counsel of such a gourmet guru when imagining her youngest son Edward's future bride. The resulting confection, Sophie Rhys-Jones, is nothing if not a surefire recipe for royal marital success.
Take a generous portion of public relations know-how, add a pinch of gracious good humour, throw in a solid family background and mix well with an impeccable media image. Leave to stand for at least five years before adding that essential ingredient (used sparingly to avoid chronic indigestion), a dash of Diana.
Apart from the outward similarities (hair, smile, studied coyness) the Diana factor was all-revailing as the prince and the PR woman announced their engagement this week.
Beside Prince Edward stood a confident, media-savvy, utterly charming thirty-omething career woman. Replace mother with career woman and she is a chain-store version of Diana without the baggage. A more mature Di showing off her £100,000 sparkler in the sunlight to declare with genuine conviction "I am ready".
How heartily the Windsors must be congratulating themselves on finally getting it right. It had seemed like a good idea at the timel, but in hindsight Diana Mark I had, at 19, probably been too young. It hadn't helped that unlike Sophie she came from a broken home. And oops!, husband Charles had been in love with somebody else even as he popped the question. The resulting woman scorned scenario had proved extremely damaging.
It was hoped the second, a feisty young filly called Fergie, would be a breath of fresh air, but all she provided was an ill wind. The Princess Royal's misfortune completed the 100 per cent marital failure rate suffered by three of the queen's four children. So it was back to the drawing board, and the current prototype princess has the potential to be a royal draughtsman's dream.
The family background of Sophie Rhys-Jones, born in Oxford in 1965, does not suggest she would be a candidate for the title Her Royal Highness Princess Edward. Mother Mary earned money typing from home and her father, Christopher, was nothing grander than a high-achieving tyre salesman. Any aristocratic links are tenuous, and it is thought the Rhys-Jones roots can be traced back to Bantry Bay in Co Cork.
The middle class Rhys-Joneses, including Sophie's brother, David, lived in a thatched cottage in Kent and scrimped and saved to ensure that the dark-haired, fun-loving girl attended the best of private schools.
School-friends have described her as Miss Average, but she managed to secure six O levels and, urged on by her parents to continue her education, gained two A levels and completed a secretarial course. On moving to London in the early 1980s she landed a job as a secretary for a public relations firm.
A three-year stint as a secretary at a London radio station followed (it was there she first met Prince Edward who was dating her friend) before the now decidedly Sloane Rangerish Sophie took to the slopes for a stint as a chalet girl. Her growing list of boyfriends was added to at this point when she met an Australian ski instructor. She spent a year with him in Sydney before becoming restless and returning to London.
Now in her mid-20s, she continued to carve out a career in PR, working as a consultant to various charities and then joining MacLaurin Communication and Media in London, whose clients included such television luminaries as Thomas the Tank Engine and Mr Blobby.
It was in 1993 while promoting a Real Tennis match (an old-fashioned type of tennis for toffs) that she met Prince Edward properly. She posed for photographs with him, hand resting playfully on his shoulder, and by the time he left he had her phone number.
A few months later the press got wind of the burgeoning relationship, and it sparked a five-year cat-and-mouse game where the experienced media couple - Prince Edward has his own film production company - sought to stay out of the limelight while capitalising on his existing and her growing royal connection in order to further their careers.
Sophie herself will not be relying on royal hand-outs when they marry as she is already well on her way to being a millionaire with the company she formed with a friend. R-JH public relations turned in a profit of £750,000 last year, and this can only improve after the marriage when wealthy clients will flock to be looked after by a genuine PR princess.
Learning from past mistakes, the queen apparently turned a blind eye to the couple staying over together at Buckingham Palace and each of them, now both in their mid-30s, will continue to work after they marry. They are completely at ease with each other, friends said this week, the five-year courtship designed to ensure Edward would not follow his siblings from the altar to the divorce courts.
To believe their own carefully orchestrated publicity is to conclude that this is a couple very much in love, although the "we are best friends who also happen to love each other" line from this week's press conference will hardly set their new £10 million home, Bagshot Park in Surrey, alight. Rumours about the Prince's sexuality seem to have finally been put to rest with the announcement, rumours that will no doubt surface again at the first sign of trouble in this thoroughly modern marriage.
Over the past few days, the British press has predictably devoted pages to analysis of the impending royal union, although the London Independent afforded the development a disdainful four lines. Most commentators agree, however, that the marriage must work if the increasingly frayed fabric of the monarchy is to be given a chance to mend.