The Rustic Soup President James Garfield Had His Own Recipe For

What our presidents eat is a topic of endless fascination, and one that may contribute to how they're seen by posterity. The more recent the president, the more relatable the food choices — who wouldn't enjoy Barack Obama-approved puffy tacos or ribs from Bill Clinton's favorite Arkansas barbecue joint? James Garfield held office back in 1881, however, at which time people's tastes were very different from what they are today. Case in point: He enjoyed the squirrel soup so much that he had his own recipe for it. This wouldn't have been seen as anything unusual back in the day, but squirrel meat is seldom found on today's menus, so some might find his food choice to be an odd one by contemporary standards.

If you want to eat like James Garfield, you can follow the recipe originally printed in a White House cookbook that came out in 1887.No squirrel? No problem, since chicken thighs can be used in their place, and the rest of the ingredients aren't anything unusual. The soup is made with vegetables such as celery, corn, lima beans, potatoes, and tomatoes in addition to three or four squirrels (or two chicken thighs). Everything is boiled together in a pot of salted water until the squirrels can be shredded, then the soup is thickened with butter and flour and poured over toast squares fried in butter. No matter the meat, it sounds like a tasty dish to set before a president.

These days, squirrels are something you can usually obtain only if you shoot them yourself, and both squirrel hunting and eating seem to have declined in recent decades. Too bad, since squirrels are a pest most gardeners can gladly do without, and squirrel meat, which I have both hunted and eaten, is not bad at all. (I'd say it tastes like slightly piney rabbit.) In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, not only was hunting a way of life for many, but hunters may have been permitted to sell their excess yield, since squirrel dishes would sometimes feature on the menus of taverns and restaurants. Besides James Garfield, there were two other presidents in the 1800s who were known to have eaten squirrel meat: Abraham Lincoln and William Henry Harrison.

Lincoln wasn't much of a foodie, and his wife complained that he barely ate a thing. Even so, as a boy growing up on what then passed for the frontier, he subsisted on such rough-and-ready fare as corn dodgers and squirrel stew. Harrison was likely a far more enthusiastic proponent of the dish, since not only did he enjoy it himself, but he had the stew served to eligible voters during his 1840 election campaign.