When history classes teach us about Abraham Lincoln,
they usually cover the basics: He was a lawyer, statesman, 16th president of the United States,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation, led the Union through the Civil War,
and was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in D.C. in 1865. And while that's a pretty good overview
of one of the most important people in U.S. history, we don't ever really get to learn
much about what Lincoln was like outside of his national duties. Such as, what he liked to eat.
Funny enough, despite being the president and having a cook on staff for his daily meals,
Lincoln wasn't much of an eater. According to Suzy Evans, a lawyer,
literary agent, author, and historian,
Lincoln often simply forgot to eat. Evans writes of Lincoln's eating habits on her blog,
"Not prone to eating breakfast every day, it has been said that he had an egg and biscuit
only occasionally. Lunch was often only an apple with a glass of milk,
and dinner could be entirely forgotten unless a tray of food was forced on him."
However, when the president did eat, there was one meal Abraham Lincoln loved above all others.
A Midwest man, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, spent his childhood in Indiana,
and settled in Illinois before taking up residence in the White House. Because of this,
the food he liked best were the items that reminded him most of his hometown favorites.
According to historian Suzy Evans' blog post,
"[Lincoln] never lost a boyhood taste for Kentucky Corn Cakes,
Gooseberry Cobbler, [...] Gingerbread Cookies, and Corn Dodgers."
From his list of favorites, you get the picture that Lincoln's appetite wasn't huge
and was very specific. Most of these items tend to be desserts or snacks — appetizers
at best. However, if there was one entree he couldn't get enough of,
it was chicken fricassee. According to A Treasury of White House Cooking by Francois Rysavy,
"[Lincoln] liked the chicken cut up in small pieces, fried with
seasonings of nutmeg and mace, and served with a gravy made of the chicken drippings."
So, even when he indulged in something more substantial than nibbles,
Lincoln preferred to fill himself on hearty, simple home-cooked meals. The attitude Abraham
Lincoln took toward food seems less absent-minded than restrained in general. Lincoln's friend and
fellow state representative Joe Gillespie, as shared by O'Shaughnessy's, once said,
"He was a remarkably temperate man. [Lincoln] eschewed every indulgence,
not so much as it seemed to me from principle, as from a want of appetites."
In truth, Lincoln's preference for simpler foods was likely reflective of frontier conditions
at the time. Presiding over a country literally torn in half by a civil war would also probably
affect one's appetite. In an account provided to Lincoln Cottage by Rae Katherine Eighmey,
author of Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen: A Culinary View of Lincoln’s Life and Times,
it's said that Mary Todd Lincoln even asked the White House chef whether they
could prepare some "old-fashioned chicken fricassee" in an attempt to divert the
president from his work so he could sit down for a good meal that he enjoyed.
This was part of a general strategy she employed that also included inviting various guests for
supper so that Abraham Lincoln would have to emerge from his office to play the host. The
fricassee gambit failed and, as Eighmey suggests, the increasingly gaunt look Abraham Lincoln
developed during the course of the war could have been exacerbated by his indifferent eating habits.
"Shall we stop this bleeding?"
If you want to try Lincoln's favorite dish, blogs like Wildflour's Cottage Kitchen and
The Intelligencer provide pretty solid recipes to make at home. The one in The Intelligencer
bills itself as the Lincoln recipe, and says in order to make the chicken in a creamy sauce,
you'll need flour, seasonings like salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaf, parsley, nutmeg,
and mace, some butter, mushrooms, and chicken thighs among other ingredients.
After putting the chicken in a plastic bag with the seasonings and flour,
you'll want to melt butter in a skillet and brown the chicken on all sides and then sauté
the vegetables. The remaining flour and some milk will then create the sauce that goes on top. So,
while we may never get to eat food prepared by a real White House chef any time soon,
that doesn't mean we can't still eat like a president.
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