historic curriculum

New World foods (lists & resources)

American school lunches (resource material)

Consuming History: Investigating Food from Other Times and Places Around the World, New York Times, grades 6-12

Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom, multidisciplinary lesson plans for grades 4-6. Excellent resource!

Presidential food favorites

U.S. Dietary Recommendations

Where did our food originate?

Apples & More, University of Illinois Extension, grades 3-8

Blueberries have roots!, U.S. Highbush Council, grades K-6

Chocolate: The Exploratorium & The Field Museum, grades 3-8

Corn Curriculum, multidisciplinary units for elementary students

Rice romp, U.S. Rice Producers, grades 4-7

Spices in Your Favorite Foods, grades 5-7

Origins of Agriculture, Indiana University, interactive high school lesson

Mesopotamia food & farming

Foodways of the Rio Grande, elementary students

Ancient Rome--Cena Bene, ancient Roman banquet, grades 6+

Medieval Europe--Medieval Feasts, grades 3-4, AskERIC lesson plan

1492, Columbian Exchange--Guiding Student Discussion, grades 9+

1500, Renaissance Europe--500 Year Old Food Makes Me Sick!, creative lessons from the book It's Disgusting and We Ate It, James Solheim, K-5

1600--Food: Balancing a Navajo Meal (includes recipes), K-4

1621--Investigating the Pilgrim's First Thanksgiving, Plimoth Plantation

1700s-1800s--Rice and Slavery, grades 9-12

1700s-1800s--Slavery and Sugar: Molasses to Rum to Slave, grades 9-12

1747--Why are British sailors called Limeys?

1750--When Rice Was King, South Carolina history lesson from the National Park Service

1760--Colonial Christmas at Williamsburg, curriculum for elementary and middle school

1770s--What's Cooking-A Colonial Recipe, New Jersey Historical Society, elementary grades

1776--Salt Junk and Ship's Biscuit, diet of the Royal Navy, elementary grades

1797--How did Johnny Appleseed help the pioneers move west?, Kindergarten

1846-1850--Great Irish Famine curriculum

1855--Watermelons!, Nebraska frontier foods, middle school

1860--A Shanty Boy's Meal, lumber camp fare from the Michigan Historical Center, K-5

1872--Vermont's Historic Diners, feeding the new industrial nation, grades 9-12

1900s--Why were school dinners brought in?, UK

1915--Australians at Gallipoli ate hardtack & bully beef, includes recipe

1917--Food is ammunition-don't waste it, National Park Service, grades 6-12

1918--Sow the Seeds of Victory!, National Archives and Records Administration

1941--British civilian rations, Imperial War Museum

1942--Victory Gardens, home front survival lessons for middle & high school students

1943--The Rationing Challenge, interactive lesson from the BBC

1945--Menuette, a British card game...includes original rules

diversity lessons

Atlantic Migration of African Foods, grades 9-12

Breads from around the world, primary grades...more resources

Chinatown Food ways, Museum of Chinese in the Americas, grades 3-8

Chinese food: grade 3 & grade 6

Cuisine Art: Exploring Ethnic Culture Through Food, New York Times, grades 6-12

Cultures and Cuisine Research, middle school lesson plan

Food for the Ancestors, discovering foods of Mexico, PBS

Food for Thought, Indiana Historical Society, adaptable for all grades

Foods of the Desert Culture, Native American food in Nevada, grades K-5

Hey, Mom! What's for Breakfast?, food around the world for grades 3-5

International food court, National Geographic, grades 6-12

Japanese traditions, cookbook & tea ceremony, grades K-6

Kaffee- und Teegesellschaften & Advertisments from a German-American cookbook, 1894, German-American food traditions, German I-IV

Mexican, New Mexican & Tex Mex history & cuisine (resource material)

Key Ingredients: America by Food, Smithsonian Institution

A Meat By Any Other Name...Social Views Towards the Animals We Eat, NYT, grades 6-12

Vegetarian Lesson Plan, adaptable for all grades

Yam and Eggs, breakfast around the world, Oklahoma State Extension Service, grades 4-6

economics

Ben & Jerry's Flavor Graveyard, why some products are discontinued, grades 3-5

The Big Mac Index, lesson comparing foreign exchange rates, grades 9-12. Additional data here.

The Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner, using the Consumer Price Index, grades 9-12

Gross Domestic Pizza, determine the Gross Domestic Product of Pepperonia & Anchovia, grades 9-12

I'll Trade You a Bag of Chips, Two Cookies, and $60,000 for Your Tuna Fish Sandwich

Mad Cattlemen Sue Oprah over Price Decline, media and economics, grades 9-12

food ads & packaging

Art of Packaging Leftovers (resource material)

Food ads, Tony the Tiger, Aunt Jemima, etc.

Food packages, kid's favorite brands 1940-1970 (resource material)

Food Product Design (resource material)

Kellogg's Special K Ads, a lesson in body image, grades 9-12

Looking at Food Advertising, grades 1-8

Packaging Tricks, grades 1-8

You've Gotta Have a Gimmick: A Lesson in Junk Food Advertising, grades 5-7

food as art

Jell-O paint

Please Eat the Art, Smithsonian (food sculpture ideas)

food styling & advertising

Deconstructing food ads for snack and junk food that target children, grades 3-12

Don't Buy It, PBS Kids,

Food for Thought: Making Food Look Good, grades 5-8

Looks Good Enough to Eat!, food styling in advertisements, grades 5-8

food psychology and consumer satisfaction

Food & Brand Lab/Cornell University

Portion Distortion, supersizing your caloric intake, U.S.D.A.

Reading Between the Lines: The Psychology of Menu Design (resource material)

food science & technology

All about cans, intermediate lesson from the Can Manufacturing Institute

Cooking up an Explanation: Investigating the Science Behind Various Food, NYTimes, high school level

Cooking With Chemistry, grades 9-12 (butter, candy, dairy, potato chips!)

Dining on DNA: An Exploration into Food Biotechnology, high school level

Finding Science in Ice Cream, secondary experiment designed by the University of Guelph (Canada)

Food for Keeps, food preservation methods & make beef jerky, Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, grades 4-6

Food is Elementary, experiential curriculum integrating academic dicipline with food, nutrition, culture and the arts

Food Science Experiments & Learning, resources & lesson plans, University of Pennsylvania

Gatorade, the chemistry of sports drinks, grades 9-12

Genetically Modified Foods, PBS, grades 9-12

Have it Your Way, Fast!: Technology Behind Fast-Food Restarants, NYTimes, grades 8-12

How food works, root beer, cotton candy, pop rocks & chocolate

How long can canned items last?, FDA (resource material)

Iron Science Teacher: hot dogs, candy, baking soda, marshmallow peeps & pumpkins

Nutrasweet & Olestra, chemistry lessons for grades 9-12

Physical chemistry of making fudge, high school+

Pop Secret Information, NYTimes, grades 6-12

Properties of acids, bases, and neutrals & pH values of foods, grades 7-12

Puffed Wheat, Minnesota Historical Society, grades 9-12 (More material)

School sciences and food, Institute of Food Science & Technology, grades 9-12

Science of cooking, Exploratorium

Sports nutrition and the Olympics, grades 7-12

Space food I & II, all grades

Sugar science, (background material), grades 7-12

language arts

History through the study of cookbooks, grades 7-8

Books for Cooks, British cookbooks through time, adaptable all grades

Alcott, Louisa May: Amy's pickled limes

Arabian Nights: "A Thousand and One Fritters: The Food of the Arabian Nights," essay by Charles Perry, Medieval Arab Cookery [Prospect Books:Devon] 2001 (p. 488-496)

Austen, Jane: I, II, III IV & V

• The Jane Austen Cookbook/Maggie Black & Dierdre La Faye
  
• Cooking With Jane Austen/Kirsten Olsen

Burns, Robert: The Supper and The Haggis

Chaucer, Geoffrey: Cookery techniques & recipes

Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen): Babette's Feast

Joyce, James: The Joyce of Cooking: Food & Drink from James Joyce's Dublin/Alison Armstrong

Melville, Herman: Chowder from Moby Dick

Pepys, Samuel: Dining with Samuel Pepys (skip to page 127), background material from the American Dietetic Association

Shakespeare, William: feasts & foods

Recommended reading: Novel Cuisine: Recipes from famous novels/Elaine Borish & The Literary Gourmet: Menus from Masterpieces/Linda Wolfe

world hunger

Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger, Food and Agriculture Organization, lessons for all grades

World hunger, grades 9-12, Utah Education Network

Need to find pictures of a specific food?
If you need a couple of pictures to illustrate your report/lesson plan? Try these for starters:

WEB-BASED IMAGE LOCATORS & CLIPART
Google Images and Ditto.com are good places to find pictures of basic foods (milk, spaghetti, hamburgers, pizza). These sites return thumbnail images for your selection.You can also search food clip art by type of food.

COUNTRY-SPECIFIC FOODS

• The Global Gourmet (36 destinations)
  
• Country tourist bureaus & travel agency Web sites--often feature traditional dishes
• Country-specific cookbooks (many are illustrated)

• Viking foods
• Roman Britain
• Medieval food clipart
• Colonial Virginia
• Dutch foods, 17th century: Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life, Donna R. Barnes & Peter G. Rose
• American foods, 17th-19th centuries: Living History Museums..search for your state/time period. Some of these have pictures.

HISTORY OF U.S. DIETARY RECOMMENDATIONS (resource material)

Wilbur Olin Atwater, U.S. Department of Agriculture, published our country's first food compostion tables in 1894. The first daily food guides published by the U.S.D.A. appeared in 1916. The initial recommendations consisted of five groupings: meat & milk, vegetables & fruits, cereals, fats & fat foods, and sugars & sugary foods.

The original U.S.D.A. recommendations have been overhauled five times: "12 Groups" [1933], "Basic Seven" [1942], "Basic Four" [1956] the "Food Guide Pyramid" [1992] and "Dietary Guidelines for Amerians" [2005]. New groupings and interim adjustments reflect advances in nutrition science.

HISTORIC RECOMMENDATIONS

• The Origin & history of U.S. Dietary guidelines (1894-present)
  ---topic overview, includes comparative chart of government recommendations through time
• Historic charts & pictures
  ---primary documents, in color; excellent for classroom displays and hand-outs

FOOD GUIDE PYRAMID

• Food Guide Pyramid
  ---plenty of background information from the U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture
• Picture of the 1992 Food Guide Pyramid & serving recommendations

• New Dietary Guidelines for Americans
• FAQs for the new Food Guidance System

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT AMERICAN EATING PATTERNS?

• America's Changing Eating Patterns, Food Review, U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture
  ---overview of 20th century food issues and eating patterns
• America's Eating Habits: Changes and Consequences
  ---includes historic summary of historic dietary recommendations
• Diet and Health
  ---obesity in America

Some of the "New World" food from South America were introduced to North America via Europe. Some of the most popular are: Tomatoes, white potatoes & chocolate.

Internet sources

• Centers of crop origins (map)
• Negected Crops: 1492 from a different perspective
• Columbian Exchange
• Seeds of Change Garden, Smithsonian Institution

Recommended reading
1. America's First Cuisines/Sophie D. Coe
2. Foods America Gave the World/A. Hyatt Verrill

The books referenced above also contain separate entries detailing the origins and history of each food on their lists. Your local public or school librarian will be happy to help you find copies.

Presidential food favorites

There are many sources you can use to learn about presidential foods. The three best books for learning about favorite foods are:

1. The President's Cookbook/Poppy Cannon & Patricia Brooks ...Washington to Johnson
2. The First Ladies Cook Book/Margaret Brown Klapthor ...Washington to Reagan
3. The White House Family Cookbook/Henry Haller ...Johnson to Reagan

ADDITIONAL SOURCES
1. Biographies
...these often mention favorite childhood foods, family dinners. If the president liked to cook it's sometimes noted. Food allergies, too.
2. Presidential homes & musems Example: President Kennedy's favorite foods
3. Chef memoirs--example: The White House Chef, Rene Verdon [JFK]
4. Wive's cookbooks--example: The Bess Collection, Bess Wallace Truman

NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES
Inaugural fare, State dinners, family Christmas suppers, and other presidential menus are sometimes printed in these sources. They are also good for researching recent presidential favorites and food lore (who said "I hate broccoli?"). Ask your librarian how to access these databases. You will most likely be able to do some of this research from your own home computer. All you need is a library card!

Keep in mind...a president's favorite meal is NOT always what's served in the White House. Why? Because this is a public place and meals have to meet certain standards. Sometimes a president's (or any famous person's) favorite food is something they liked from childhood. This is often not reported in presidential history books. Meals taken privately (most often breakfast, or with the family) were better reflections of personal preference.

What did George Washington & Abraham Lincoln like to eat?

About George Washington's food preferences
George Washington is often associated with cherries (cherry tree, cherry pie etc.). According to his biographers, our first president did, indeed, love cherries. He also loved a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and fish. He preferred simple meals over fancy ones. George Washington's home ( Mount Vernon) was completely self-sufficient. It had extensive farms, orchards, meat preservation facitlites (to make ham, bacon, etc) and animals.

"George Washington's own eating habits were relatively simple. One observer of the time said that he "took what came with philosophy"; certainly no one could accuse our first President of having been a gourmet. Custis, Martha Washington's grandson, described Washington's food preferences: "He ate heartily, but was not particular in his diet, with the exception of fish, of which he was excessively fond. He partook sparingly of dessert, drank a home-made beverage, and from four to five glasses of Madeira wine"...A special passion of the President's was nuts. He would buy hazelnuts and shellbacks by the barrel...Food reflects the man. In Washington, there is the interesting dichotomy of a man disinterested in the refinements of the table, yet anxious to offer as many refinements as possible to his guests, simple in his own tastes but generous toward others...As food reflects the man, it also reflects the times. The food served at the President's table from 1789 to the end of Washington's second term, 1797, indicates the new nation's dependence on the land. Game, fowl, meats, plantation-grown fuits and vegetables, fish from local rivers of the Atlantic reveal the abundance of the land. Spliced throughout the menus are the remnants of Washington's English heritage--puddings, cream trifles, and taste for port and wine."
---The President's Cookbook, Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks [Funk & Wagnalls:New York] 1968 (p. 8-9)
[NOTE: This book has many pages about Washington's food and dining habits. It also includes modernized recipes with history notes. If you need more information ask your librarian to help you find this book.]

"Washington said: "My manner of living is plain, and I do not mean to be put out by it. A glass of wine and a bit on mutton are always welcome. Those who expect more will be disappointed." This, however, is an example of the "plain living" offered guests at a Presidential dinner: There was an elegant variety of roast beef, veal, turkey, ducks, fowls, hams, etc.; puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, almonds, figs, raisins, and a variety of wines and punch [one guest observed]."
---ibid (p. 2)

"Breakfast seems to have been the only meal in the Presidential house that was relaxed. At least the report of Henry Wansey, and English manufacturer, who had breakfast with the President and his family on June 8, 1794, indicates this to be so: "Mrs. Washington made tea and coffee for them; on the table there were two small plates of sliced tongues and dry toast, bread and butter, but no broiled fish, as is generally the custom. Miss Eleanor Custis, her granddaughter, in her sixteenth year, sat next to her, and next, her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, two years older. There were but few of form; one servant only sttended who wore no livery."
---ibid (p. 8)
[Modernized breakfast recipes in this book include: Indian Hoe Cakes, Peggy Stewart Tea, Rice Waffles with Ferry Farm Sauce, Buttered Eggs.] Nellie Custis' Hoecake recipe (original description & modernized recipe), courtesy of Mount Vernon (end of page).

Dessert, anyone?
Popular desserts in George Washington's place & time were plentify and delicious. Martha Washington's recipes include: Fruit preserves, candied fruits, dried fruits, fruit cakes, sugar cakes (like cookies), carraway cakes, Shrowsberry Cakes, Great Cakes (enriched spice cakes), Marchepane Cakes (marchepane is sugared almond paste), Bisket bread (like lady fingers), Mackaroones (macaroons), Ginger Bread, Iumbles (enriched sugar cookies flavored with vanilla, almond or lemon), Jellies, and Pie/tarts (fruit...apple, cherry, berry; nut...almond... or mince), custard (lemon, orange, almond), Cheese cakes & Snow. If you want to examine this primary document ask your librarian to help you find a copy of: Martha Washington's Book of Cookery and Book of Sweemeats, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press: New York] 1995. ISBN 0-231-04931-5 (Check index pages for recipe references)

If you need something quick (& modernized), The Presidents' Cookbook/Poppy Cannon & Patricia Brown offera: Trifle, Rich Boiled Custard, Lettuce Tart, Cats' Tongues nee Spoon Biscuits (like lady fingers), Blackaps (apple dessert), Candied Orange Peel, Orange Butter, Martha Washington's Bonbons (candy), Fresh Cheese with Almonds, Custard Pie with Almonds, Rich Blackcake, A Tansy with Sliced Oranges, Martha Washington's Gingerbread, Maids of Honor, Martha Washington Famous Great Cake, Martha Washington's White Fruit Cake, Shrewsbury Cakes, Jumbles, Waverly Jumbles, "A Cheap Dessert," (hominy, cornmeal, eggs, milk & butter), Martha Washington Cake and Martha's Cherry Bread-and-Butter Pudding. If you want a couple of these, we can fax or scan.

What about the cherry tree??!
George Washington's cherry tree chopping story has long been debunked by historians as nationalistic myth. Not unsimilar to the mid-19th century accounts detailing the first thanksgiving feast. A nation divided needed to forge a unified history if it was going to survive. It worked. Or we would not be here discussing this today. Cherries were well known in the Old World. Recipes for them (preserves, pies, tarts, wine) were familiar to early Americans. Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery (transcribed by Karen Hess) contains several instructions for preserving cherries, in the English culinary tradition. There is no mention as to whether cherries were cultivated at Mount Vernon.

According to the fruit experts at the University of Georgia: "Sweet cherries came to the USA with English Colonists in 1629, and later were introduced to California by Spanish Missionaries. In the 1800's sweet cherries were moved west by pioneers and fur traders to their major sites of production in Washington, Oregon, and California. Cultivars selected at that time still form the base of the industry today."

John Bartram's famous Catalogue of American Plants circa 1783 contains several references to 18th century American cherries

Prunus Padus Sylvatica [Virginiana]...Bird or Cluster Cherry
Prunus Racemosa...Dwarf Bird Cherry
Prunus Pumila...Sand cherry
Prunus Serotina...Black cherry
..."Bartram's Garden Catalogue of North American Plants 1783," Journal of Garden History: An International Quarterly, Volume 16, Number 1, January-March 1996 (entire issue).

If you need more information we recommend:
The First Ladies Cook Book: Favorite Recipes of All the Presidents of the United States/Klapthor
---more details, pictures & recipes Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess
---his wife's cookbook, with explanations about the recipes. Good if you need primary source material

What did General Washington eat during the Revolutionary War?

• George Washington's camp chest
• Valley Forge commissariat
• Supplying Washington's Army

What did Abraham Lincoln like to eat?
According to the food historians:

"Just as so much about [Abraham Lincoln's] life has been shrouded in latter-day myth and legend, making it difficult to assess the truth about the man, so, too, have his food habits and tastes been the subject of controversy. If the only records extant were the menus of hist state balls and banquets, one would, justifiably, conclude that Abraham Lincoln must have been a gourmet to end gourmets, a connoisseur of exquisite sensitivity, a bon vivant supreme. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the other hand, certain observes of the time (and later observers of those observers) dogmatically asserted that Lincoln was "almost entirely indifferent to food except that he liked apples and hot coffee." Helen Dupre Bullock, Historian of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has written: "Authorities agree that Lincoln was indifferent to food, not particularly knowing or caring what was placed before him, whether it was cold or hot, and even whether he ate it or not. If not reminded of meal times he forgot them." Still another writer asserted that Lincolon "was one of the most abstemious of men; the pleasures of the table had few charms for him. His breakfast was an egg and a cup of coffee; at luncheon he rarely took more than a biscuit and a glass of milk, a plate of fruit in its season; at dinner he ate sparingly of two courses." Contradictory evidence comes from Colonel William H. Crook, the President's bodyguard. He wrote: "Mr. Lincoln was a hearty eater. He never lost his taste of the things a growing farmer's boy would like. He was particularly fond of bacon. Plentiful and wholesome food was one of the means by which he kept up his strength which was taxed almost beyond endurance in those days [1862]." It seems to us that the food truth about Lincoln must lie somewhere between these extreme points of view. In the pattern of so many of our strongest Presidents (always, of course, excepting Jefferson), Linclon relied on food to feed the furnace. He ate well when served a tasty meal, but was usually so preoccupied with problems of politics and power that he geve little thought to food unless faced with it. Then he could enjoy a delicious meal as well as the next one. One aspect of Abraham Linclon's characteristically gentle nature was apparent in his approach to food. His stepmother, Mrs. Thomas Lincoln, commented that "Abe was a moderate eater--he sat down and ate what was set before him, making to complaint. He seemed careless about this."... ...Temprementally...Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were totally unlike...This was striking apparent when it came to food and food history. Although both came originally from Kentucky, they reflected two completely different Kentucky traditions. Mary had been raised in the lush bluegrass region of the state, where gracious, comfortable living and rich, elaborate cooking were legendary. Abe gew up on the frontier, where he ate very plain food, partly for economic reasons, partly because of the frontier tradition. Corn dodgers, cakes made of coarse cornmeal, were a staple. Wild game provided the protein a growing boy needed. During the days of young manhood, where he boarded at the Rutledge Tavern in New Salem, his diet consisted largely of cornbread, mush, bacon, eggs, and milk. Several friends of that period recalled later that if Abe was partial to any one food it was honey, a great delicacy for him at the time."
---The Presidents' Cookbook, Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks [Funk & Wagnall's:New York] 1968 (p. 236-7)

"Family meals at the Lincolns' were routine. Early in the morning the President liked a "good hot cup of coffee." But often he would forget about breakfast until 9 or 10A.M. John Hay, one of Lincoln's privage secretaries, occasionally ate with teh President. He noted that the frugal repast might consist of "an egg, a piece of toast, coffee, etc." On occasion breakfast was a single egg. For lunch, Hay reported, Lincoln "took a little lunch--a baiscuit, a glass of milk in winter, some fruit or grapes in summer...He ate less than anyone I know." Lunch was usually eaten irregularly..."
---ibid (p. 239)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. If you have time? Ask your librarian to help you find a copy. This book also contains several modernized recipes for Lincoln's favorite foods, including Nob Creek Kentucky Corn Cakes, Rail Splitters (corn muffins), Nancy Hanks' Steamed Potatoes, Rutledge Tavern Squash Pie, New Salem Fruit Pies, Gooseberry Cobbler etc. If you need to make something for class tomorrow let us know. We can send you a recipe.]

What kind of cook was Mary Todd Lincoln?
Mary Todd Lincoln was born to a wealthy family in Lexington Kentucky. As such, she was well schooled in the fine aspects of social etiquette rather than the practical arts of domestic life. Her biographers note Mary's early frugality and preference for simplicity. Her entertainments were well attended and, as one might expect, grew lavish in the White House period. She was especially fond of strawberries, and enjoyed giving strawberry sociables, where these fine fruits were combined with cake and ice cream.

"By the 1840s improved methods of salting and icing allowed Mary Lincoln to keep food longer than her mother could. Imported oysters, a delicacy on local menus, could be preserved for weeks by bountiful washing in salted water and some help from the weather. A few heretics (Mary Lincoln was not usually one of them) no longer baked bread, depending, instead, on a wagon that delivered bread, crackers, and cakes three times a week. The Springfiled stores were beginning to sell prepared butter, and in season local farmers brought vegetables and fruits down Jackson Street for the unfixed prices that proper ladies were not supposed to contest. Penny-pinching Mary Lincoln was among those who violated the prescription that ladies don't beat down prices, and she had several public battles with the fruit peddler over the prices of his less than perfect strawberries...Lincoln was never a fussy eater, and was satisfied most mornings with an apple for his breakfast. Still, he would be home for dinner in the middle of the day, and only delinquent housekeepers kept men waiting. But in Mary Lincoln's home it was the husband whose casual sense of time and lack of appetite made regular hours an impossibility...Sometimes Abraham helped out by shopping...Even with improved technology and help with marketing, cooking took up the largest part of Mary Lincoln's day. Some Springfield women relished their culinary labors and earned awards at the country fair for their pickles, preserves, cakes and pies...Mary never entered those competitions, or at least she never won a prize. The one household product for which she was remembered--what the family circulated as Mary's recipe for white cake--was a simplified gloss on the more complicated version of a standard cake...Having grown up without practical experience in cooking, Mary relied on Kentucky staples. Years later, amid the haute cuisine of France, she fondly remembered the "waffles, batter cakes, and egg cornbread--not to mention "buckwheat cakes" of Lexington. The Lincoln menu was also full of what Mrs. Trollope disparaged as America's "sempiternal ham," and Mary Lincoln's frugality encoruaged the appearance of cheap local game, such as woodchucks, pheasants, and prairie chickens. In any case, she learned to do what the slaves had done in Lexington: roast coffee, make calf's-foot jelly, preserve fruit, and prepare cheese. In the summer the kitchen ran her, and it was both the repetitiveness and the lack of control that led disaffected matrons to compare themselves to slaves...By 1851, after nearly ten years of housekeeping, Mary Lincoln had progressed to an advanced version of Miss Leslie's Cookery, purchasing this, along with Miss Leslie's House Book or Manual of Domestic Economy for Town and Country...In the more difficutlt version there were recipes for everything from family soup to to invalid cookery of beef tea and blackberry preserve...Because she had not learned the vices of sugar and, like everyone in Springfield, innocently belived it the "most nourishing substance in nature," she spent hours making puddings, cakes, candies, and cookies. By modern standards, the Lincoln household consumed a vast amount of sugar...Some of these sweets were eaten by others, for if Mary Lincoln was a novice cook, she was a practiced hostess with an easy charm that obscured any shortcomings in her menus. Her contemprary Julia Jayne Trumbull acknowledged her as the "prettiest talker in Springfield,"..."Mary Lincoln often entertained small numbers of friends at dinner and somewhat larger numbers at evening parties. Her table was famed for the excellence of its rare Kentucky dishes and in season was loaded with venison, wild turkeys, prairie chickens and quail and other game" ...In her kitchen at Eighth and Jackson Mary Lincoln relied on simple fare, offering her guests not four courses but tea and cakes and strawberries in season. "This last week, we gave a strawberry company of about seventy," she wrote in 1859. "If your health will admit of venturing out, in such damp weather," went one Mary Lincoln invitation, "we would be much pleased to have you, Mr. B., and the young ladies came round, this eve about seven and pass a social evening." By seven Mason and Mary Brayman would have eaten their middle-of-the-day dinner as well as their supper, leaving the hostess responsible only for dessert. Unlike some of her friends and family, Mary Lincoln did not use her cookind for charitable purposes...though she often invited friends from the...church for tea and cakes...By the mid-1850s Lincoln's prominence required substantial entertainments, and with money available from his successful law practice, Mary Lincoln hosted large receptions--what in the East passed a levees. On the prairies, as elsewhere, French was the language of sociability, used by Mary and her friends to distinguish their grandest affairs from the even more elegant soirees or "grand fetes,"..Instead, she simply put food on the table, and the crowds poured into the house to eat it..."
---Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, Jean H. Baker [W.W. Norton:New York] 1987 (p. 109-113)

Compare this with the dinner served at Lincoln's second inauguration.

Authentic period recipes
The Kentucky Housewife/Lettice Bryan [1839] has been reprinted recently by Image Graphics, Paducah, Kentucky. Your librarian can help you obtain a copy. Please note: most of these recipes are not simple *frontier* food. They are most likely the foods enjoyed by Mrs. Lincoln's family.

"Gooseberry cobbler.
Elderberries, gooseberries--all the old-time berries and fruits foudn favor with President Lincoln. Such berries often grew wild in his home state of Illinois. The original recipe for this old-fasioned cobbler called for a dripping pan or 9-by-18-inch pudding dish, rather large for today's family. The recipe served 12, but can easily be adapated to 6 servings.
Flour
Lard or salad oil
Salt
Baking powder
Milk or water
Sugar
Gooseberries.
Combine 4 cups flour with 4 tablespoons melted lard or salad oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 4 teaspoons baking powder. Mix as you would a biscuit dough, stirring in little by little about 1 cup milk or water. (Add only enough liquid to make a dough taht can be rolled quite thin.) Roll the dough and line a pudding dish with it (or a 9-by-18-inch pan). Mix 2 tablespoons sugar with 3 tablespoons flour and sprinkle it over the crust. Then spread 6 cups washed gooseberries in the dish. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup sugar (more if berries are too sour). We the edges of the crust with a little flour and water mixed. Place an upper crust on top, pressing the edges together. Make 2 openings by means of 2 inch-long incisions at right angles. Bake in a hot (425 degrees F.) Oven about 30 minutes. To serve: cut into squares and serve wither warm or cold with rich milk or cream or whipped cream, vanilla sauce, foamy sauce, or vanilla ice cream."
---The Presidents' Cookbook, Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks [Funk & Wagnall's:New York] 1968(p. 250)
[NOTE: Crisco works fine if you can't get lard or salad oil.]

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