This Classic Southern Side Dish Once Got Abraham Lincoln's Stamp Of Approval

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While there's enough and more to learn from Abraham Lincoln's role during the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery, his day-to-day is also a treasure trove of inspiration. Of humble beginnings, the man behind the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address retained his simple tastes even as he went from farmhand to store clerk to soldier to lawyer to congressman and finally, president. 

A slew of books probing his daily habits reveals that when it came to food, Honest Abe remained attached to his frontier roots. One of his favorite snacks as a youngster was an old-school Southern dish that we wouldn't mind seeing more of today — corn dodgers. These versatile hand-flattened patties made using cornmeal, a hardy Southern staple, mixed with salt and fat (often bacon grease for flavor), are emblematic of the kind of frontier food Abraham Lincoln grew up eating. Nowadays, when they do make an appearance, it is as a side dish served alongside greens, stews, gravy, gumbo, or simply with some butter and maple syrup.

His earliest association with the Southern side dish describes Abraham Lincoln carrying them around in his pocket for a midday bite. "The Boyhood of Lincoln" by Eleanor Atkinson, published in 1908, is based on the author's interviews with the 16th president's cousin and childhood playmate, Dennis Hanks. The book describes how, after a morning spent working on farmland, Lincoln would settle down under a tree for an afternoon break with a book and his hardy cornmeal snack.

That Abraham Lincoln was famously indifferent toward food is a widely held opinion that stems, at least partially, from accounts of his simple eating habits. Eleanor Atkinson's book recollects how, as a youngster, he would eat whatever his aunt placed before him. Later, a colleague from his time as a lawyer described how the martyred president never complained about food placed before him (via Food Timeline). However, alongside such accounts are equally numerous ones of his favorite foods like honey and apples, and the one meal that Abraham Lincoln particularly enjoyed – chicken fricassee. The duality conjures up a man who enjoyed foods of his childhood, rooted in hardy but sparse frontier cuisine, and the Southern delicacies he was exposed to later in life, partly because his wife hailed from a wealthy Kentucky family. In fact, Lincoln even crowned Mary Todd Lincoln's cake as the best ever.

In addition to corn dodgers, the iconic president's childhood favorites included other cornmeal-based snacks like rail splitters and cornmeal pancakes. There were also the famous two-ingredient gingerbread cookies, made from ginger and sorghum, which his mother used to make as a rare treat. Per one anecdote, young Lincoln gave away most of the treat to a neighbor boy who came from an even humbler background. Rae Katherine Eighmey, author of "Abraham Lincoln In The Kitchen: A Culinary View of Lincoln's Life and Times," has used this anecdote to recreate the recipe for Lincoln's childhood gingerbread cookies (via NPR). Seeing as they, like the corn dodgers, could be crammed into pockets (and mouths), gives us clues about the cookies' texture.