Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen

by Rae Katherine Eighmey

  During the 1800s, a great many Americans enjoyed oysters. They were featured on the menus of swanky New York City hotels and were so plentiful they fed the masses inexpensively. Some oysters were pickled in water, vinegar, and spices and sealed in cans. Others traveled alive, in their shells, in barrels filled with seaweed and, sometimes, ice. Oysters can stay alive, holding their shells tightly sealed, for a number of days.

  For longer life, several period cookbook authors suggested feeding oysters following this recipe: “Put them into water and wash them with a birch besom [small broom] until quite clean; then lay them bottom downwards into a pan, sprinkle with flour or oatmeal and salt and cover with water. Do the same every day and they will fatten. The water should be pretty salty.”

  Storekeepers Lavely and Meyers also mention “cans” in their ads for oysters. As early as 1825, New Yorker Ezra Daggett packed salmon, lobsters, and oysters in tin cans. But the process required the food to be cooked inside the closed cans for five hours so that it would be safely sealed. The Springfield merchants may well have been selling both canned and live oysters. Various ads state oysters “by the dozen or by the can,” suggesting some merchants were dealing with live oysters. During the month of December, Watson proclaimed that his store was receiving oysters “daily.” And H. C. Meyers & Son headlined “Prices Again Down!” on several occasions, perhaps in a hurry to get the live oysters out of the store and into customer’s stomachs—stewed, scalloped, and maybe even on the half shell.

  We do have a hint about how Lincoln liked to eat oysters. After a speech in Pontiac, Illinois, in January 1860, he declined an offered plate of raw oysters. “If I should eat a raw oyster with you it would be the first time I had ever eaten one. I like them cooked.” A guest at a restaurant dinner in Springfield in 1856 reported Lincoln ate fried oysters. And, eight years later, fried oysters became part of an election victory celebration.

  On November 8, 1864, President Lincoln anxiously awaited the returns for his reelection. He walked over to the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House. There were telegraph lines into Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s office. There Lincoln, his secretary John Hay, and friend and reporter Noah Brooks could monitor the votes as they came in from the states. It was a cold and rainy night. Clerks brought in the telegraphed reports showing Lincoln’s vote totals growing higher than the Democratic candidate, Lincoln’s former general George McClellan. At midnight, with the results certain, telegraph officer Major Thomas Eckert brought in supper. John Hay described the scene. “The President went awkwardly and hospitably to work shoveling out the fried oysters. He was most agreeable and genial all the evening.”

  After this submersion into oyster and Lincoln lore, I figured I’d best test a recipe. Like Lincoln, I wasn’t ready to eat mine raw. But Miss Eliza Leslie’s oyster stew did sound mighty good. As the simmering smells of lemon, mace, cream, and oysters filled my kitchen, I turned again to the question that started this chapter. What made Lincoln, well, Lincoln? Certainly the decade of the 1850s was pivotal: slavery in the Southern states, simmering through ten presidential administrations, came to a full boil of dissent as Kansas erupted into bloody riots in 1855 and ’56 and John Brown raided the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Lincoln’s speeches and letters demonstrate a thoughtful, ideological, ambitious, and pragmatic man at the geographical and metaphorical crossroads of the nation.

  And there was the palpable, unstoppable momentum of progress. Its sound was inescapable in Springfield. Our Ames, Iowa, backyard was about the same distance from the Union Pacific railroad line as the Lincolns’ was from the Great Western line. The everyday sounds of the ninety trains passing through Ames added an underlying soundtrack mixed in with cars, air conditioners, the general hum of mechanized modern life, sounds you don’t really realize are there. I could hear the trains as I worked in the yard and even inside the house on cold winter sound-carrying nights. Yet, the Union Pacific’s diesel-electric engines are quiet compared to the chuff-chuffing and steam-whistle blowing of Lincoln’s Great Western. During Lincoln’s day there would have been a sustaining base rhythm of progress, too—mechanical sounds, perhaps felt more than heard—from the steam engines, drive belts, and machines of the various factories around town. At night there would have been only the trains and the ticking of the clock in the Lincolns’ house. Progress calling, marking time.

  Lincoln traveled by rail to some of the Lincoln-Douglas debate sites and was greeted by throngs of hundreds at the stations. He took trains around the state to court and to speak for Republican candidates. And he boarded the train at 11:15 a.m. on Wednesday, February 22, 1860, for New York and Cooper Union. The trip took three days and Lincoln changed trains twice in the middle of the night. He made it to Philadelphia at 1:00 a.m. on Saturday and then into New York later that day.

  Lincoln’s Cooper Union presentation the night of February 27, 1860, is said to have been the speech that brought him to national prominence as a voice of reason against the continuing threat from the Southern, slavery-promoting political forces. It is a masterwork of perspective, argument, and persuasion. It was reprinted in newspapers across the nation. Again, Lincoln spoke of progress, saying that to adhere only to the past (as the opposition had framed the conflict) would “be to discard all the lights of the current experience—to reject all progress—all improvement.” He ended with a call to action. “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

  In 1860, presidential candidates were nominated directly at political conventions, without primaries or caucuses. The April Democratic Party convention in Charleston, South Carolina, adjourned without a nominee. The Republicans were to meet in Chicago in the middle of May. In a candid letter to political ally Lyman Trumbull, dated April 29, Lincoln let it be known that he did see an opening for a run for the office. “I will be entirely frank. The taste is in my mouth a little.”

  Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for president three weeks later on May 19, 1860. He ran against a Democratic party in disarray. Once again, Stephen Douglas was his main opponent; two splinter-faction tickets headed by John Breckenridge and John Bell divided the Southern states’ votes.

  When Abraham Lincoln was nearly eight years old, his father moved the family some sixty miles and across the Ohio River from Kentucky to Indiana—from a slave state to the opportunity of a free state. Sixty miles and the Ohio River had then effectively separated them from slavery. Not quite fifty years later, steamboats and railroads had overtaken long-distance travel by foot and horse. News and information sped across copper telegraph wires. And no state was isolated from the controversy of slavery.

  The stage was set for Lincoln’s presidency and the Civil War that was to follow.

  IRISH STEW

  There are numerous Irish stew recipes in period sources. This is one of the best, not only of the period recipes, but also of any stew I’ve made. The ratio of a relatively small quantity of inexpensive mutton to the much larger amount of cheaper potato in this recipe and others reflects the challenging economic situation of many Irish immigrants.

  1 pound boneless breast of mutton or beef chuck

  1 ½ cups water

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  2 pounds small, or B-size, red potatoes, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices

  1 or 2 medium onions, peeled and thinly sliced

  Put the meat into a heavy stew pan with a lid. Add water. Simmer for 1 hour, or until the meat is tender. Spoon the meat from the broth and cut into small pieces. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Divide the meat into thirds. Divide the potatoes and onions into thirds as well. Put one-third of the potatoes in the bottom of the pot, cover and simmer with one-third of the meat and one-third of the onions. Repeat until all are back in the pot. Simmer until the potatoes are tender, about another half hour to an hour. Watch carefully, sha
king the pot from time to time so the potatoes don’t stick to the bottom and scorch.

  TIP FOR SUCCESS: Having the right pot size is key to this delicious dish. A tall, narrow, heavy pot will allow you to have the nine layers of meat and potatoes so that the simmering broth will cook and flavor the potatoes evenly.

  Makes 8 servings

  ADAPTED FROM “IRISH STEW,” AN AMERICAN LADY, THE AMERICAN HOME COOK BOOK, 1854.

  GERMAN BEEF WITH SOUR CREAM

  The kitchen fills with delicious aromas as this simply seasoned beef roasts to perfection while creating the basis for a sour cream sauce. Letting the roast rest while you finish up the gravy allows the juices to be retained in the meat as you slice it for serving. This hearty dish goes well with sauerkraut.

  1 2- to 3-pound beef round or rump roast

  ¾ cup sour cream

  ½ cup milk, approximately

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

  Remove the meat from the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature, about an hour.

  Make a basting sauce by combining the sour cream with enough milk to thin to the consistency of whipping cream and put in the refrigerator. Depending on the size of your roast, you may need to mix up more.

  Preheat the oven to 375°F. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper. Put fat side up in a roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 225°F. The meat should reach medium rare internal temperature of 135° to 140°F in 2 to 3 hours. After the first 10 minutes at this lower temperature, baste with the sour cream mixture. Continue basting every half hour. Stop basting about a half hour before you think the meat will be finished. Remove the meat to a plate and let it rest, covered with foil, for 15 minutes. Gently mix the juices and sour cream in the baking pan to make a sauce.

  Makes 8 to 10 servings

  ADAPTED FROM “TENDERLOIN WITH SOUR CREAM,” WILLIAM VOLLMER, THE UNITED STATES COOK BOOK: A COMPLETE MANUAL FOR LADIES, HOUSEKEEPERS, AND COOKS, 1859.

  SERVING SAUERKRAUT: Next to beer, sauerkraut may be the most famous German traditional menu item. Lincoln’s neighbors and friends probably shared their homemade cabbage dish as a special treat. A German-American cookbook, The United States Cook Book: A Complete Manual for Ladies, Housekeepers, and Cooks, offers this way for serving sauerkraut:

  Sour Kraut is best, when boiled very slowly for six hours with some good roast meat-drippings and the requisite quantity of soup-stock. A few minutes before dishing, pour over it some good white wine and then send it to the table with an accompaniment to suit your taste. It must be very soft and nearly quite dry. If a couple of pounds of fresh pork are cooked with the sour kraut, it will give a nice flavor.

  MINCED BEEF THE PORTUGUESE WAY

  This version of steak and eggs makes the most out of leftover meat and bread. Quickly cooked, the ingredients are arranged in a fanciful manner and glazed with a sugar syrup. The communal serving platter welcomes guests to a hearty meal with a strong sense of international style.

  1 ½ pounds chopped cooked sirloin

  1 tablespoon flour

  1 cup prepared beef gravy

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

  ¼ cup simple sugar syrup or melted apple jelly, to glaze

  3 pieces of homemade-style bread, toasted, buttered, and cut into triangles

  6 eggs, poached or hard-boiled

  Place the beef in a medium frying pan and warm it over low heat. Sprinkle with the flour and stir to blend. Stir in the gravy. Taste and add salt and black pepper if needed. Stir until thoroughly warmed, but do not let it boil. Stir in a tablespoon of the glaze or jelly.

  To serve, take a large serving dish or pie plate and stand the bread triangles on edge so that the points meet in the center. Fill the areas in between with the meat mixture. Make a hollow in the center of each meat section for an egg. Sprinkle the eggs with a little pepper, salt, and a few drops of glaze. Glaze the combs of bread and serve.

  Makes 6 generous servings

  ADAPTED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.

  OYSTER STEW

  In the nineteenth century, oysters were a popular, inexpensive, and well-traveled seafood. Barrels of live oysters traveled south and west from New York and Baltimore harbors. Canned oysters, too, filled store shelves in Springfield. Mace, the ground husk of a nutmeg, was a common seasoning at the time. Here it adds both a mellow and slightly sharp subtle flavor to the light stew.

  TO STEW OYSTERS:

  1 pint shucked oysters with liquid

  ¼ teaspoon ground mace

  Peel from 1 lemon

  4 white peppercorns

  1 cup light cream

  2 tablespoons flour

  2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

  “Snippets,” small triangles of homemade-style bread, toasted and buttered, to serve

  Drain the oysters, reserving their liquor. Wash to remove any grit and filter the oyster liquor to remove grit as well. Place the oysters, liquor, mace, lemon peel, and peppercorns in a small saucepan. Stir in the cream and simmer very gently over low heat, until the edges of the oysters curl up indicating that they are cooked, about 5 minutes. Mix the flour and butter with a fork into a smooth paste. Remove the oysters from the cooking liquid and keep warm. Drop small bits of the flour mixture into the liquid then stir until smooth and thickened. Return the oysters to the liquid to warm through. Serve with “snippets.”

  Makes 4 servings as an appetizer.

  ADAPTED FROM “OYSTERS, STEWED,” MISS ELIZA LESLIE, MISS LESLIE’S NEW RECEIPTS FOR COOKING, 1852.

  INAUGURAL JOURNEY BANQUETS AND SETTLING INTO THE WHITE HOUSE

  The Lincolns arrived in the City of Washington, as the downtown core of the District of Columbia was called, in the 1860s. They had left Springfield, Illinois, where they lived their daily routines surrounded by friends and family. They had traveled east buoyed on waves of adulation, but that changed as they entered the city filled with doubters and, at times, even enemies.

  We lived in the Washington area for a while, moving there from the Midwest, as had the Lincolns. I was surprised at how southern the nation’s capital felt in the mid-1970s. The rich aroma of boxwood hedges filled the air in the residential side streets of Washington, as well as in the gardens of George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, and the narrow, cobbled streets of Alexandria. There was a different rhythm to life and different foods, too. Some foods we know were common in the Lincolns’ kitchen—grits and country ham—were unfamiliar to me and my midwestern way of cooking. It was our first experience living in the South away from family and familiar customs. As we tiptoed below the Mason-Dixon Line, southern style took some getting used to.

  The Lincolns faced bigger changes when they arrived in the City of Washington. During the first year in the White House, Mary Lincoln invited Illinois friends and family to stay in the presidential home while she carefully reached out to old friends and new acquaintances to establish a secure world for their sons and to create moments of escape for increasingly besieged Abraham.

  Julia Taft, whose younger brothers became constant playmates for Lincoln’s sons Willie and Tad, wrote of the Southern influence even on Northern families living in Washington on the eve of the inauguration. “Before the war Washington was really a Southern city. We were accustomed to the convenience of having Negro servants and a good many Northern people like my parents hired such servants from their masters, though they would have been horrified at the idea of actually owning slaves.”

  I had thought that writing about the food during Lincoln’s White House years would be a simple task. Certainly, now that the Lincolns were in Washington, there would be extensive reports of their every action, including the meals they ate. I was wrong. I did find people who presented key insights into life in the Lincoln White House, a few food descriptions, and an inaugural dinner mystery. I’ll tell those stories in two chapters. This chapter focuses on 1861, the first year the Lincolns spent in the White House. The next chapt
er centers on their sanctuary at what is now called “President Lincoln’s Cottage,” a summer White House just three miles northeast of the White House.

  We begin with the journey from Springfield. Abraham Lincoln had left Washington eleven years earlier when he completed his term in Congress. Now, the train carrying President-elect Lincoln, Mary, Robert, Willie, and Tad along with Lincoln’s secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, and two people from Springfield (Ellen, a nanny, and William H. Johnson, the young man of color who served as Lincoln’s barber and valet) traveled twelve days on a circuitous route from Springfield to Washington. Crowds thronged the route eager to see the new president and his family. Lincoln made speeches at nearly all of the seventy-five city and town stops along the way, no matter how brief. Even at small stations, he would appear and say a few words to the gathering. At many places he offered this standard comment: “I appear before you merely to greet you and say farewell. If I should make a speech at every town, I would not get to Washington until some time after the inauguration.”

  There was more time for entertaining and politics at the overnight stops in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, and Harrisburg. In those cities Lincoln spoke to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Civic leaders and political allies tried to outdo each other, hosting receptions, levees, balls, and concerts. Former President Millard Fillmore headed the welcoming committee in Buffalo.

  For all the meals in public and private on this journey eastward, the press reported only two menus. None of the travelers on the train or guests at these breakfasts, lunches, and dinners apparently noted them either. At a brief stop in Syracuse, lunch was brought on board. Waiters passed “various dishes including chicken, turkey, bread, and cake.”