Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen

by Rae Katherine Eighmey

  Considering Abraham Lincoln simply ate a turkey leg, according to Mr. Cunningham’s account, and that I was doing this alone, I decided to start with chicken thighs. They are small and have a high bone-to-meat ratio, making them less dense and faster to cook than a boneless pork loin. I figured I could handle the vagaries of cooking them completely over a low heat in my covered grill. I set the usual grill and lid aside and began the experiment. I just had to get enough slow, long-lasting coals to do the job. After several experiments trying to make enough wood coals without taking all day, I developed a compromise method of building a fire with some large kindling-size sticks, about one and a half inches in diameter and small enough to fit in the basin of my grill. I mixed in a few old half-burned pieces of charcoal to help sustain the heat.

  I built this fire in the center of the basin and propped two bricks on either side to support a “gridiron,” in this case a flat, perforated sheet made for cooking vegetables on the grill. When the small bed of coals was hot enough for me to hold my hand about five inches above for about six seconds before it was uncomfortable, I placed the gridiron and chicken on the bricks and started cooking, turning, and basting. About ninety minutes later, I had some of the best chicken I’ve ever made. The significant difference between this and what we commonly call barbecue is that the meat cooks slowly without smoke, or barbecue sauce mopping and sopping.

  Not everyone has a grill, and when it is ten below zero, I don’t much like using mine. So I tried cooking another batch of chicken in the oven at 300°F. I also slow cooked a beef brisket in the oven following the same technique. Cooked on the grill, the meat is moist with a rich browned coating. The oven-roasted version is equally good but not quite as browned. Chicken, pork, or beef, the meat tastes simply wonderful.

  Feeding barbecue to three hundred Sunday school children is one thing, but one report of a July 4, 1839, Springfield “old fashioned barbecue” raised another question. During “a gigantic Whig party rally” for the campaign of William Henry Harrison, barbecue was served to fifteen thousand people. Even though these barbecue meats were not dripping with sauce, I did still wonder how all the people at these various events ate it. After all, there weren’t disposable plates or paper napkins. Luckily, I found a detailed newspaper account of a July 4, 1858, barbecue Lincoln attended along with hundreds of Springfield residents who made the trip on a special train. The celebration was held in Jacksonville, just a few miles down the tracks from Springfield. Lincoln was one of the dignitaries on the speaker’s platform, although apparently he did not make any remarks.

  As reported in the Daily Illinois State Journal, after the conclusion of the remarks:

  Stephen Dunlap then announced that some refreshment had been provided for the occasion and that the ladies would take their seats at the tables first, the gentlemen after. This request was not strictly adhered to, for in less than five minutes hundreds of men and boys were congratulating one another with chunks of bread and meat in both hands, quite sufficient to fill a hungry belly. It was an old fashioned barbeque, and of course, we did not hear of any cups and saucers, or plates and dishes being broken; nor of any knives or forks being lost or stolen. But we did see numbers of boys carrying off four pound loaves. There was not a great variety of provisions, but it was substantial! … Everybody seemed satisfied, even the ladies agreed that “fingers were made before forks,” and the gentlemen, as well as boys, admitted that “half a loaf was better than none.”

  The reporter answered my eating etiquette question within his definition of an “old fashioned barbecue” where plates, dishes, and silverware were not heard of and the meat was eaten out of hand with chunks torn from large loaves of yeast bread that were one part plate, one part napkin, and one part meal.

  Back at the 1858 Urbana event, Mr. Cunningham described Lincoln as eating a biscuit with his turkey leg, and he also said that the table was “filled with an abundance of barbecued food.” I am inclined to take at least this part of his description literally. This, too, was a meal heavy on a variety of meats and some bread. Having equivocated on the meat part of the barbecue preparations, I was eager to dive into the bread half of the menu.

  Period yeast breads are not all that much changed from today’s. Even though the yeasts themselves and the wheat flour may be slightly different, there isn’t a radical alteration in recipe, flavor, or texture for a good, homemade-style loaf. Biscuits, on the other hand, are a lesson in food history. As leavening methods evolved from yeast to baking soda, biscuits began to rise in popularity. Period cookbooks and magazine articles I looked at all had pretty much the same collection of biscuit recipes. And these biscuits are as different as different can be from the overly fluffed, smacked-from-a-refrigerated-tube type many of us fall back on to get dinner on the table fast.

  I was surprised to see the word “biscuit” used to describe a small yeast roll in a couple of my references, but most of the recipes from the 1830s through the 1860s skip the yeast and provide lessons in making breads light either with layers of butter, beating the biscuit dough until it crackles, or by employing the magic combination of baking soda and sour milk.

  I thought I would be able to pick a favorite. I couldn’t. Each of the recipes I tested had an appeal. As to what these biscuits looked like, if I had been the cook making biscuits for any of these mass events, I would have pinched off pieces of dough, as suggested in one of the recipes, rather than rolling and cutting with a circle-shaped cutter. (I wrote about this delicious soured-milk recipe and method in Chapter 4.) We also don’t have a clue whether these biscuits were baked in bakeries in town or tossed over a rekindled fire once the meats had been removed. Either is possible and both would be filling and good.

  Now that I’d wandered through the pits and gridirons, cookbooks and journals, I’d pretty much made up my mind that the “old fashioned barbecues” were simply cooked, unsauced meats served with bread or biscuits. Still, burgoo was cooked at public gatherings in Lincoln’s time.

  Today it is cooked in backyards, at church fund-raisers, and at civic celebrations in huge cauldrons, simmering for hours, and stirred constantly, often with a long, two-by-four piece of lumber. Some say the name harkens back to a bulgur wheat dish cooked on sixteenth-century English sailing vessels. Others say the name is from an eighteenth-century American corruption of “bird stew” or “Brunswick stew.” The trusty Kentucky Housewife from 1839 has an elegant recipe for “Boulli Soup” calling for chicken, ham, and a variety of vegetables all cooked separately, diced, and combined just before serving. Gallons of burgoo were supposedly made during the Civil War by a Lexington, Kentucky, French-born chef for the Confederate Raiders under the command of General John Hunt Morgan.

  There are scores of references to burgoo in culinary history books and online. Most all of them repeat the recipe from 322 Old Dixie Recipes published in 1939 claiming to be from the 1850s. It makes 1,200 gallons and the list of ingredients includes 600 pounds lean game on the bone; 200 pounds fat hens, plucked; 2,000 pounds potatoes, peeled and diced; 200 pounds onion, peeled and diced; 5 bushels cabbage, chopped; 60 pounds tomatoes, pureed; 24 pounds corn, cut from cob; salt and pepper to taste; and Worcestershire sauce by the pint.

  Dan Beard, one of the founding leaders of the American Boy Scout movement, wrote a history of burgoo in his American Boys’ Handbook of Camp-lore and Woodcraft, published in 1920. Beard was born in 1850 and lived much of his life in Kentucky. He interviewed old-timers, gathering information about pioneer life and Native American lore, and wrote and illustrated several classic books for youth sharing that wisdom. His take on burgoo presents it as a “come as you are and bring your meat with you” kind of event: “In Kentucky in the olden times the gentlemen were wont to go out in the morning and to the hunting while the negroes were keeping the caldrons boiling with the pork and other foundation material in them. After the gentlemen returned and the game was put into the caldron, the guests began to arrive and the stew was served late in the aftern
oon; each guest was supposed to come supplied with a tin cup and a spoon, the latter made from a fresh water mussel shell with a split stick for a handle. Thus provided they all sat around and partook of as many helpings as their hunger demanded.”

  Thanks to the wonder of Web searching, I found another, even earlier, first-person recollection of burgoo. Samuel Corbley grew up on an Indiana farm and witnessed an event where the cook was from Kentucky, lending credibility to the recipe:

  I think it was the spring of [18]43 that my father’s neighbors proposed to kill all the squirrels [that were destroying the corn crop] around his farm and he would furnish the bread for a burgoo. A day was appointed and corn bread enough for a small army baked by my mother and the neighbor women. Three larger iron sugar kettles filled with water were hung up near a spring. Beverly Ballard, a Kentuckian, was appointed chief cook. The neighbors with rifles approached the farm from every direction and there was a continuous fusillade until 10 o’clock when, by agreement, the hunters met and threw down not less than two hundred squirrels. As they were skinned and washed they were handed over to the cook for boiling. There followed a feast. Soup was served in tin cups; squirrels were taken out whole with pointed sticks and corn pone was served with soup made hot with home-raised pepper.

  Most interesting in this description is that “burgoo” is the name of the event, not just the food served, much the same as “barbecue.” That is the frosting on the cake, to mix courses. A barbecue served pit- or gridiron-roasted meats with bread, and a burgoo was something very different. Both were and are mighty fine eating.

  But wait, there’s a second helping. The folks in Springfield decided to have their own Fourth of July celebration after all. On Monday the 5th, Lincoln, the guest of honor at a dinner held at 2:30 p.m. at the St. Nicholas hotel, “gave a toast to the assembled fire companies ‘May they extinguish all the bad flames, but keep the flame of patriotism ever burning brightly in the hearts of the ladies.’ ”

  SLOW-COOKED BARBECUE

  You don’t need a prepared barbecue sauce with meats cooked using this method. The molasses infuses the meat with a wonderful sweetness tempered by the black pepper and a hint of salt. This recipe uses smaller chicken thighs so the slow cooking is accomplished in an hour or two, depending on the size of the thighs, while keeping the flavor of a mid-1800s barbecue.

  5 pounds bone-in chicken thighs

  1 teaspoon salt, divided

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  ⅓ cup light molasses

  1 cup warm water

  Wash chicken thighs and pat dry, removing the skin if desired. Mix ½ teaspoon of the salt and the pepper. Sprinkle lightly over the chicken, then brush both sides with a light coating of molasses. Place in a single layer in large baking dish. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to overnight.

  Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a baking sheet with foil for easy cleanup. Place a wire cake rack on the baking sheet. Gently wipe the chicken pieces with a damp cloth to remove most of the molasses. Set the pieces on the rack.

  Mix the remaining ½ teaspoon salt with 1 cup warm water. Baste the chicken with this salted water and roast, basting and turning about every 20 minutes until chicken is deliciously browned and the meat is well done. (You may cook these thighs on a grill over a low fire.) Baste, turn, and watch carefully as molasses has a tendency to burn. Overall cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of the pieces of meat. For the bone-in chicken thighs, allow about 1 hour.

  Makes 6 to 8 servings

  RE-CREATED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.

  PEACH-AND-HONEY

  The “peach-and-honey” served at Thomas and Nancy Lincoln’s wedding celebration may well have been an alcoholic beverage similar to this one from Miss Corson’s Practical American Cookery and Household Management: “A good winter drink is made by mixing together one tablespoonful of honey and a wineglassful of peach-brandy.” This “serving suggestion” follows the recipe for making the brandy from 10 pounds of good peaches and 2 ½ gallons of 95 percent alcohol.

  ADAPTED FROM “PEACH AND HONEY,” JULIET CORSON, MISS CORSON’S PRACTICAL AMERICAN COOKERY AND HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT, 1885.

  SHORT BISCUITS

  This recipe resembles classic southern beaten biscuits, which are somewhat flat and like a thick, chewy cracker. Before baking soda and powders made their way into kitchens, beating the dough with a rolling pin or mallet as the dough was folded and turned incorporated air and lightness. Old books suggest “100 strokes”; others said it could take as long as a half hour before the dough “squeaks” with bubbles. This style of biscuit has been so popular through the years that inventors developed a wide range of laborsaving devices to help “break” the biscuits.

  The butter in this recipe helps keep the biscuits tender. The type of dough made from cutting the cold butter into the flour is traditionally called “short.” That’s where the word “shortening” has its origin.

  2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

  ½ teaspoon salt

  4 tablespoons (½ stick) cold salted butter

  ½ cup very cold water

  Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a baking sheet. Combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or 2 knives until the mixture looks like uncooked oatmeal. Stir in the cold water to make a dough that is moist, but not sticky. You may need to add a bit more water or flour. Knead a few times until you have a cohesive ball of dough. Now beat the dickens out of it. The old beaten biscuit recipes say to beat “until it blisters or squeaks.” Instead, I whirled the ball of dough in my food processor with the smooth-edged dough blade for about 4 minutes. It formed a smooth and almost glossy ball of dough that rolled out on a floured surface beautifully.

  Roll the smooth dough out on a floured work surface to ½-inch thickness. Cut biscuits with a 1-inch cutter, flouring the cutter between biscuits. Transfer the biscuits to the prepared baking sheet. Prick top of each biscuit with a fork. Bake until light brown, about 12 to 15 minutes.

  Makes 1 dozen biscuits

  RE-CREATED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.

  BARBECUE “FIXIN’S”: Mrs. Bryan did offer some serving suggestions with her recipe for barbecued shoat. When we lived in Alabama for a while, we came to call such dishes “fixin’s.” The Kentucky Housewife described serving barbecue: “When it is well done serve it with a garnish … squeeze over it a little lemon juice and accompany it with melted butter and wine, bread sauce, raw salad, slaugh or cucumbers and stewed fruit.”

  BREAD SAUCE

  This wine-soaked bread packs a flavor wallop, cutting through the richness of dark barbecued meats of the time—turkey, beef, and mutton. A small serving is just enough.

  2 cups fresh breadcrumbs, grated from a stale homemade-style loaf

  ½ cup dried Zante currants

  ¾ cup white wine

  Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer over very low heat until the wine has been completely absorbed by the bread and currants. Serve warm with barbecued pork.

  Makes 6 to 8 servings

  ADAPTED FROM “BREAD SAUCE,” MRS. LETTICE BRYAN, THE KENTUCKY HOUSEWIFE, 1839.

  CUCUMBER SALAD

  A modicum of vinegar and lemon juice and a smattering of cayenne and ginger transform normally mild-mannered cucumbers into a snappy salad. Easy to make, this relish lasts for several days in the refrigerator. It is tasty alongside any meat, adds zest to vegetables, and can be mixed with mayonnaise for a sandwich spread or tartar sauce.

  2 large or 4 medium cucumbers

  1 teaspoon salt

  10 green onions, peeled and thinly sliced into rings

  ¾ cup white or cider vinegar

  Juice of ½ lemon (2 to 3 tablespoons)

  ⅛ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

  ⅛ teaspoon ground ginger

  Pare the cucumbers, cut in half, and remove the seeds. Chop into about a ½-inch dice. Place in a n
onreactive bowl and mix with the salt. Let stand for at least 1 hour. You may keep the cucumbers salted down for about 4 hours at the most. Drain off the accumulated juices and rinse well under cold water. Add the sliced green onions to the cucumbers.

  In a small saucepan, mix the vinegar, lemon juice, cayenne, and ginger. Heat to boiling and pour over the vegetables. Let stand for at least 3 hours before serving; overnight is better. Store in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.

  Makes 6 to 8 servings as a relish

  ADAPTED FROM “CUCUMBER SALAD,” PRAIRIE FARMER, JULY 1859.

  “SALT FOR ICE CREAM”

  SPRINGFIELD SCENES FROM DIARIES AND GROCERY LEDGERS

  I have a distant and vague memory of the first time I visited Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois. I was nine years old and remember looking up and seeing a tall black hat hanging on a peg by the front door. The hallway seemed dark and narrow. Stairs to the second floor took up more room than the front-hall steps in my grandparents’ house. Nanny and Pa’s house was smaller. Their narrow stairs went up an outside wall with a window, and there was only one set of rooms on each floor. The Lincolns had parlors on either side of the central hall and several bedrooms upstairs.

  Visiting the Lincolns’ house, squished among grown-ups and crowded up to the protective barrier, I peered into rooms set up with old-fashioned furniture, books, and toys for the boys in the upstairs bedroom. I don’t remember the kitchen. All in all it was a dissatisfying visit. The year before, our parents had taken us to Mount Vernon. Now, there was a house fit for a president of the United States. The rooms in George Washington’s home were high ceilinged and grand. The lawn down to the river was fun to run across. The garden of hedges smelled different than any I’d been near. Lincoln’s house smelled dry and stuffy, but at least it didn’t burn my eyes the way the smoky and damp cabin rooms in New Salem Village had. We’d stopped at that state historic site on the same trip.