Four Shocking Recipes From the Tables of Past U.S. Presidents

22.02.2024 - 00:13 / atlasobscura.com / Ronald Reagan / Theodore Roosevelt

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In 2017, my wife’s grandmother pulled a dusty cookbook from her bookshelf and handed it to me with a sparkly-eyed grin. When I opened up The 1989 South Dakota Centennial Cookbook, I was in awe. Real politicians from South Dakota and beyond had offered up their homespun recipes for this publication, and almost all of them, from the state senators’ all the way to President Ronald Reagan’s, were absolutely disgusting.

That cookbook sparked the idea for Cookin’ with Congress, my endless mission to recreate unreal recipes from real politicians at the expense of my tastebuds. In honor of Presidents’ Day, here are four of my favorite terrifying recipes from past presidents, which I recreated and taste-tested at home so that you never have to make them yourself.

Start the day off with a healthy breakfast, as the saying goes. Your definition of health, however, may differ from President Woodrow Wilson’s. He was known to drink a simple concoction of Concord grape juice and raw eggs in the morning. Thought to be a recommendation of his old Navy doctor in order to bulk Wilson up, his healthy breakfast recipe is as simple as it is polarizing: half a glass of Concord grape juice, two raw eggs, and a spoon to stir. Wilson reportedly said it tasted like “an unborn thing.”

After tasting the creamy purple beverage, I can confirm it is definitely … embryonic; I struggled with getting it down even though I have a strong stomach. The idea of raw eggs didn’t bother me as much as the texture, which was 70 percent smoothie, 30 percent ooze. Blended with an electric whisk, Woodrow’s weight-packing meal could have been palatable. With a bar spoon? Better left for the iron stomachs of fitness influencers and Rocky Balboa.

Recipe

A hearty breakfast calls for a light, slippery lunch courtesy of one of the toughest presidents the country has ever seen. While known for downplaying assassination attempts and carrying a big stick, Theodore Roosevelt had a softer side when it came to his palate. Many of his family’s recipes featured homegrown ingredients from his garden, including this, the first gelatin-based salad I can find that was consumed in the White House.

Teddy’s Cream of Cucumber salad calls for peeled cucumbers, pimentos, milk, lemon, tarragon vinegar, whipped cream, and a side of French dressing. While the finished product looks like a shiny Watergate Salad, it tastes like someone dropped sugar-free marshmallow fluff onto a plate of crudité. The French dressing and bed of lettuce it is served upon give it the feeling of a modern salad, but the clotty consistency and milk-forward flavor