Seasons by the Sea: The Presidential Table
In honor of Presidents Day weekend, let’s take a culinary trip down memory lane. How our presidents dined and entertained, and how their wives handled White House-housekeeping, is not only historically significant, it is quite revealing.
Some of our presidents and their wives loved good food, good wine, and entertaining. Others, not so much. When Thomas Jefferson was minister to France he adopted the custom of conducting business while acting as dinner host. Although he was enamored of French cuisine and spent a great deal of money importing wines, Parmesan cheese, anchovies, capers, and other delicacies, he also never lost his taste for good ol’ American foods like turnip greens, sweet potatoes, baked shad, Virginia ham, and crab.
He grew over 30 varieties of peas in his garden at Monticello and attributed his long life to eating lots of salads and vegetables, and drinking wine rather than hard liquor. He did away with the traditional weekly levees (afternoon receptions for men only) and held parties on the Fourth of July and New Year’s Day. This was partly because there was no hostess at the White House; when he needed one, he called upon Dolly Madison to help out. He did, however, feed up to 12 guests almost every day of the week, dinner being served at 3:30 in the afternoon, and at a round table for more ease of conversation. Margaret Bayard Smith called Jefferson’s table “republican simplicity united to epicurean delicacy.” According to Monticello.org, Representative Manasseh Cutler, a guest for dinner on Feb. 6, 1802, recounted a meal of “rice soup, round of beef, turkey, mutton, ham, loin of veal, fried eggs, a pie called macaroni and not very agreeable, ice cream very good. Many other jimcracks, a great variety of fruit, plenty of wines, and good.”
Abraham Lincoln was not a foodie; he was more of a food-is-fuel kind of guy. He would start his day with cornbread smothered in honey with strong black coffee, and he loved pecan pie. He planned his own inaugural luncheon, served at the Willard Hotel, and while the menu was not bad, it was fairly simple: mock turtle soup, corned beef and cabbage, parsley potatoes, blackberry pie, and coffee.
All of the cooking at the White House was done over open hearth fires up until Millard Fillmore’s administration of 1850 to 1853. Meats were cooked on spits, and iron and bronze pots were suspended over the fire to cook stews, soups, and vegetables. Breads were baked first in bake ovens built into the back of the hearth wall, and, once the temperature dropped, pies, cookies, and custards were cooked next. Coal and hardwoods were used, coal for the highest heat, while maple, ash, oak, hickory, and dogwood would burn more evenly.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt, first saw the White House kitchen in 1933, it was full of cockroaches, all of the counters and the refrigerator were wood, and whatever equipment it had was outdated. She insisted on a complete upgrade and modernization, which became Public Works Project 634. The Depression was so bad, President Roosevelt wanted to use relief workers for the improvements. Unfortunately, the cooks continued to prepare food the same way, and apparently Mrs. Nesbitt was dreadful when it came to menu planning, so the food continued to be terrible. She was fond of cheap cuts of meat, tongue, sweetbreads, and Jello molds with marshmallows. F.D.R. claimed that the only reason he considered running for a fourth term was so he could fire Mrs. Nesbitt.
Years ago I took a tour of the White House and was fascinated to learn that Rutherford B. Hayes’s White House china was painted with gory hunting scenes. The purpose was to dissuade guests from eating too much. I have never read this in any book, but I saw the china with mine own eyes and it was rather unattractive. It probably also didn’t help that Hayes’s wife, Lucy, was referred to as Lemonade Lucy because she refused to serve alcohol in the White House. Party pooper!
Over time, the art of state dinners also changed. Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower were the first presidential couple to host a lot of state dinners. In 1959 they entertained the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, King Baudouin of Belgium, and the presidents of Argentina, El Salvador, Mexico, and New Guinea. Their guests were usually high-up government officials and corporate bigwigs. Mamie served American wines and her favorite dessert, apple brown Betty. The parties were big and guests were seated at a huge U-shaped table.
The John F. Kennedys replaced this kind of table arrangement with smaller, round tables to seat 10 to 12 guests. They also expanded the guest list to include more people from the arts, such as Andre Malraux, Robert Lowell, Tennessee Williams, and Leonard Bernstein.
Lyndon Johnson was the first to do away with regular, formal dinners at the White House, and moved them to his ranch in Stonewall, Tex. Some people made fun of this but many guests felt it was more homey and intimate to be invited to the president’s private residence. Richard Nixon gave the most state dinners, and George and Laura Bush gave the fewest of any postwar presidencies. The Clintons were fond of packing their state dinners with gobs of Democratic party donors, and the parties were held in tents to accommodate the many hundreds now invited.
Walter Scheib was the White House chef for 11 years, from 1994 to 2005, under Clinton and Dubya. I attended a wine pairing and cooking demonstration in 2012 presided over by Mr. Scheib and learned a few tasty tidbits from him. One Christmas the Clintons had so many houseguests the food costs went $25,000 over budget, and Hillary was super cranky when she had to write the check. Chelsea Clinton took six weeks of cooking lessons from Mr. Scheib before she left for college because she was converting to veganism. Laura Bush asked him to get the recipe for Blue Bell ice cream (big in Texas), which he did, but was sworn to secrecy by Blue Bell lawyers. He also got the recipe from Bill Clinton’s mother, Virginia, for his favorite dessert, peach and blackberry cobbler, but had to tinker with it “to make it good.”
The foods and protocol and manners of the White House and our presidents have been as varied as the politicians themselves. The Obama administration’s current emphasis on good health and having a kitchen garden is reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson’s years in the White House. Maybe the days of Barbara Bush’s layered pea and bacon salad with sour cream and mayonnaise dressing are over. Then again, maybe not. Whatever the case, celebrate the institution and our history with some favorite presidential recipes.
Click for recipes