With great power comes great responsibility — and, in the case of the U.S. President, a slew of great perks, too. Among them? An executive chef at the White House whose job it is to cater to the President’s every craving and culinary whim. Richard Nixon, for one, was known to eat cottage cheese topped with ketchup, while Ronald and Nancy Reagan reportedly treated guests to persimmon pudding. Of course, presidential preferences are as much a reflection of an era as they are a product of the commander in chief’s individual appetite. Some foods, like chicken and ice cream, have been staples of the White House kitchen for two centuries, while others — such as turtle, squirrel, and opossum — have been mostly relegated to history. Here are some of the favorite foods of U.S. Presidents.
Hoecakes
The very first U.S. President, George Washington, favored a staple of his home state, Virginia: hoecakes, a type of flat griddle cake made from cornmeal. The dish originated with Indigenous peoples in North America but quickly grew in popularity among both colonists and enslaved communities. In fact, some accounts claim hoecakes got their name because enslaved folks would cook them on the blade of a gardening hoe over an open fire. Historian Rod Cofield notes, however, that “hoe” also referred to a kind of cooking equipment at the time, which is the more likely source of the name.
In any case, hoecakes were common throughout colonial America and were particularly beloved in Virginia; writer and diplomat Joel Barlow even described them as “fair Virginia’s pride” in his 18th-century poem “The Hasty-Pudding.” Washington, for his part, liked his hoecakes with butter and honey, and was known to eat them for breakfast with a cup of tea. His step-granddaughter Nelly Parke Custis provided a recipe in a letter: “Add as much lukewarm water as will make it like pancake batter, drop it a spoonful at a time on a hoe or griddle (as we say in the South). When done on one side, turn the other — the griddle must be rubbed … with a piece of beef suet.”
Cornmeal was a key ingredient in other presidential favorite foods, too. James Monroe, another President from Virginia, enjoyed spoon bread, a cornmeal souffle made with milk, butter, and eggs. Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky, once said, “I can eat corn cakes as fast as two women can make them.” And Rutherford B. Hayes, who came from Ohio, liked corn in many forms; his wife’s recipes included corn fritters, corn bread, and corn soup.
Rice Pudding
When Ulysses S. Grant became President after leading the Union to victory in the Civil War, his wife, Julia Grant, sought to increase the visibility and prestige of the role of the First Lady. She organized and hosted both informal receptions and formal events, including the first-ever state dinner for a foreign head of state, a lavish feast of more than 20 courses in honor of Hawaii’s King David Kalakaua on December 22, 1874. Julia became known for opulent dinners and gatherings such as that one, and even replaced the Army cook her husband had hired with an Italian chef.
Grant himself liked simplicity, though. No fancy dessert pleased him so much as rice pudding. One contemporaneous source wrote that the rice pudding served in the Grant White House was “such a pudding as would make our grandmothers clap their hands with joy.”
Ice Cream
Thomas Jefferson is often credited with helping to popularize ice cream in the United States. He likely encountered the frozen treat when he lived in France in the 1780s, and when he returned to the U.S., he brought with him a handwritten recipe and four ice molds. The dessert became a regular part of his menu and was served on at least six occasions to guests at the President’s House, often inside pastries. One visitor described the dish as “balls of the frozen material inclosed in covers of warm pastry, exhibiting a curious contrast, as if the ice had just been taken from the oven.” Jefferson’s cook, Honore Julien, later opened a catering and confectionery business that advertised ice cream, and recipes increasingly appeared in American cookbooks in the early 19th century.
Squirrel Soup
You won’t find squirrel on many American menus today, but it was a popular option as recently as the mid-20th century, especially among people who grew up hunting. (Instructions for preparing the animal even appeared in Irma S. Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking until 1996.) James Garfield, for one, loved squirrel soup — a recipe for which appears in The Original White House Cook Book, published in 1887. (It begins: “Wash and quarter three or four good sized squirrels; put them on, with a small tablespoonful of salt, directly after breakfast, in a gallon of cold water…”) According to an old exhibit at the White House Visitor Center, Garfield’s doctors even suggested that the soup might “revive his appetite” after he was shot in 1881.
Opossum
William Howard Taft, a great gourmand, loved many foods, but steak most of all, according to White House housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffray. He reportedly ate steak for breakfast — he hated eggs — but he also had a taste for opossum, which he may have served alongside turkey at Thanksgiving. On a visit to Atlanta soon after he was elected, he attended a large dinner in his honor, for which he requested a meal of “possum and ‘taters” — specifically, baked possum with baked sweet potatoes. Describing the feast, the Topeka State Journal wrote, “…there came a waiter who fairly staggered under the weight of the choicest ‘possum of the very choice one hundred, dressed whole and properly garnished with rich golden Georgia yams, and followed by another waiter with a flagon of persimmon beer.”
Turtle Soup
More than one President considered turtle to be a special, celebratory meal. In fact, turtle soup inspired the founding of a dining group, the Hoboken Turtle Club, which counted John Adams and George Washington among its members and served turtle soup with boiled eggs and brandy. Legend has it that Adams even ate turtle soup for dinner on July 4, 1776, a date we still honor today as Independence Day.
Abraham Lincoln similarly celebrated his second presidential inauguration in 1865 with turtle stew, and ate mock turtle soup — typically made with a calf’s head, a much cheaper protein — at his first inauguration in 1861. (Mock turtle soup inspired the Mock Turtle character in Alice in Wonderland, which had the shell and flippers of a turtle and the face of a calf.)
The turtle-eating trend accelerated from there. Between the mid-1800s and 1920s, Americans turned a sea turtle called the diamondback terrapin into a delicacy akin to the best lobster today. Rich soups made with cream, butter, and sherry or Madeira wine showed up on the menus at expensive restaurants, and Heinz and Campbell’s jumped in with their own (considerably more affordable) canned versions. As a result, diamondback terrapins dwindled to near-extinction, until Prohibition and the Great Depression reduced the demand for such luxuries.