Most former U.S. presidents enjoyed rather hardy breakfasts

Former U.S. president William McKinley ranks first in the “big breakfast club” at the White House in Washington, D.C., according to a post on the MyRecipes.com website written by Kat Kinsman, a freelance journalist based in New York City.

 

McKinley, a native of Niles, Ohio, served as president from 1897-1901. He and First Lady Ida McKinley “regularly feasted on ‘army portions’ of breakfast foods, including hot breads, potatoes, steak or chops, fruit, coffee and occasionally fish,” Kinsman said.

All this was in addition to eggs, often fried or scrambled, but sometimes in the form of a fluffy, baked “McKinley four-egg omelet that was rather akin in size to an egg casserole.”

 

No. 2 on the “big breakfast” list is William Howard Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was president from 1909-13. He was the largest president, tipping the scales at 332 pounds…on average.

 

Kinsman said Taft refused to eat eggs, but he was known to fill his plate with items such as “grapefruit, broiled venison, grilled partridge, waffles with maple syrup and butter, hot rolls, bacon and hominy.” (Hominy, shown below, comes from yellow or white maize, also known as field corn. Dried hominy kernels are soaked in an alkali solution of lye or slaked lime.)

 

Third in line is Warren G. Harding of Blooming Grove, Ohio, who occupied the White House from 1921-23. “First Lady Florence Harding (who rose much earlier) served massive, country-style breakfasts of grapefruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, hot cereal, wheat cakes with maple syrup, toast, corn muffins, huge quantities of coffee and her famous waffles made with stiffly beaten egg whites,” Kinsman said.

 

Former president Franklin D. Roosevelt of Hyde Park, N.Y., who held the presidency from 1933-45, also had a good appetite. His breakfast meal of choice often included salted mackerel or kippers, Kinsman reported. The latter dish is a serving of herring that has been split open, cleaned, salted and smoked. The fish is then grilled, broiled or sautéed.

 

On other mornings, Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt might devour a plate of doughnuts. He preferred to brew his own coffee, a dark French roast ground from green coffee beans.

 Former president Lyndon B. Johnson of Stonewall, Texas, who served as president from 1963-69, was a huge fan of eggs, omelets, pancakes, waffles, sausage, toast (from homemade, freshly baked bread) and peach preserves and grits…but most importantly, there “darned well better be hot biscuits on the breakfast table…lunch and dinner, too,” Kinsman noted.

 

A favorite breakfast indulgence enjoyed quite regularly by LBJ was creamed chipped beef on toast. In fact, that’s what he requested to have for breakfast on his inauguration day in 1965.

 

Creamed chipped beef on toast was also quite popular with former president George H.W. Bush of Milton, Mass., who was president from 1989-93.

 

That dish was on the White House menu for a breakfast meeting in 1989, when one of the guests was Denver Broncos football quarterback John Elway. His team was in town for a “Monday Night Football” televised duel with the Washington Redskins.

“I got so sick, I couldn’t play,” Elway said. It was most likely the flu, and not due to chipped beef on toast, but Elway has avoided the dish ever since.

 

Take a page from the White House physician’s recommendation for the troubled tummy of former president Woodrow Wilson of Staunton, Va., who was in office from 1913-21.

 

Wilson was told to start his day by drinking “two raw eggs in Concord grape juice.” The mixture was designed to cure any ailment.