Gingerbread Boys and Girls

Lincoln Bicentennial

This year we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday. Most prominent historians rank our 16th president, whose birthday was February 12, 1809, among the most admired and consequential American leaders; some place him at the very top of the list. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation put an end to slavery in the United States and his leadership through the Civil War kept the union intact.

To commemorate the occasion, the National Archives will schedule lectures, films and other events throughout the year. During the Presidents' Day holiday, from Thursday, February 12 through Monday, February 16, the original Emancipation Proclamation will be displayed in the National Archives East Rotunda Gallery (it is open to the public; admission is free). There will be numerous other events honoring Lincoln nationwide.

All of which makes discussing his favorite foods seem trivial by comparison.

Yet, the Lincoln Bicentennial has been the inspiration for festive dinners throughout the country. President Obama’s inaugural theme, designed to reflect the occasion, included a meal based on the foods that Lincoln liked: seafood, wild game, root vegetables and apples. Design Cuisine, a catering company in Arlington, Virginia chose a menu that began with a stew of scallops, shrimp and lobster in puff pastry; the main course featured breast of duck and roasted pheasant with sour cherry chutney, molasses-sweetened sweet potatoes and winter vegetables; dessert was apple-cinnamon sponge cake.

Frankly, this probably would all have been a bit too fancy for Lincoln, who apparently had little interest in food and who thought that overeating was unhealthy. Historians note that Lincoln rarely ate breakfast and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, forced him to eat lunch, often bringing a tray of food into the president’s office.

Although he had risen to the highest office of the land, Lincoln never lost sight of where he had come from. He remained an unpretentious man, particularly when it came to food; more likely to favor a biscuit and coffee over caviar and champagne, and the grass-roots cooking of his Kentucky and Indiana childhood instead of the haute cuisine of the sophisticated Washington, D.C. power elite.

If he had a favorite food at all, it was surely chicken fricassee, a simple dish made with sautéed chicken and vegetables. He ate more enthusiastically when this was served to him, which prompted Mary Todd Lincoln to hire Alice Johnstone, a cook who had a particularly good recipe and who served the chicken and its creamy gravy with biscuits. Lincoln was also fond of fresh fruit, particularly apples, and was known to nibble a handful of nuts every now and then.

For all his simplicity of taste and down-to-earth culinary preferences, Lincoln did love desserts, perhaps because sweets were such a rare luxury in his childhood. Anything with fine white sugar sprinkled on top and cakes and pies laced with molasses or honey found favor on his palate. Mary Todd Lincoln baked him Vanilla Almond Cake, a tall layer cake heaped with thick white frosting, and a baker in Washington, D.C. once said that Lincoln was his best customer for pecan pie.

Lincoln’s biggest yen was for any confection made with sorghum syrup, the thick, sugary cane liquid that tastes somewhat like molasses. His mother had baked sorghum cake, whose flavor and fragrance was etched in the president’s culinary memory. The sorghum-laced ginger cookies his stepmother baked were immortalized when Lincoln mentioned them during one of his debates with Stephen Douglas.

For those wishing to celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial, a good menu might include Chicken Fricassee with Apples and Mushrooms. Serve the dish with cooked egg noodles or rice and a simple green vegetable such as buttered green beans topped with a scattering of crushed, toasted hazelnuts or almonds. Fresh homemade biscuits would be an ideal accompaniment. For dessert, Gingerbread or Gingerbread Boys and Girls would be appropriate; the recipes call for molasses rather than Lincoln’s beloved sorghum syrup, but either would be fine.