A Lincoln Mystery Among the Cakes

I stumbled on a mystery while researching Lincoln’s life during this 200th anniversary year of his birth, and ended up writing a book to solve it.

In 1831, 22-year-old Abraham Lincoln spent a month in New Orleans. Yet, Lincoln never wrote or said a word about his visit to what was most sophisticated American city of the day. My novel Abraham Lincoln in New Orleans explores this mystery, dramatizing how those experiences challenged the unsophisticated Lincoln and set the platform for his life and career.

Link to Amazon listing for Abraham Lincoln in New Orleans.

More about the story: John Roll, an irrepressible 17-year-old Sangamon Town, Illinois lad, begins his narration of the saga. “This has been the best year of my life. They’ll be adventures ahead, but I can’t think any will be as good as the ones I’ve had heading down to New Orleans with Abe Lincoln.”

Roll describes how Lincoln, his stepbrother, and cousin were hired by mysterious and flamboyant Denton Offutt to build a flatboat on the banks of Illinois’ Sangamon River and then take a load of farm goods down the Mississippi River. Abe impresses Sangamon Town citizens with his wit and bravery as he saves two boys from drowning in the freezing river. Later Lincoln demonstrates his ingenuity when he devises a way to save the cargo and the boat when it hangs up on a dam at New Salem.

Along their journey and in New Orleans Lincoln and Roll interact with boatmen, merchants, slave owners, free persons of color, musicians, actors, librarian, even a doctor – a cross-section of America. They take a ride on one of the nation’s first railroads, visit the theater, and encounter a slave auction, eventually coming back upriver on a steamboat. The impressionable, curious Lincoln comes to terms with the complexities of the day and considers his future in this rollicking adventure.

Abraham Lincoln in New Orleans is based on true events and historic sources.

I’ve found more delicious cake recipes during this anniversary year, too.

This cake from an 1852 recipe highlights the challenges of mid-19th century cooking, there are times when eggs are scarce or expensive. In 1858 Springfield January eggs cost four times as much as they would in April, when more hens were laying more frequently. Frugal homemaker Mary Lincoln might have resorted to just such a recipe.

Cake Without Eggs

1/2 cup butter
2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup cream
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mace
1 cup currants

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Cream the butter and add the sugar. Gradually add cream. Stir in half the flour and spices. Then add buttermilk or sour milk. Stir in the currants last. Pour batter into a well greased and floured tube pan. Bake until cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. About 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 of an hour. If you bake cake in 3 loaf pans it will take about an hour.

Copyright 2010, Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.

Abraham Lincoln Thanksgiving: Part 2

This was a day for slow cooking and consideration.

I followed Miss Leslie's directions in her 1845 cookbook. Stuffed the craw of our heritage Bourbon Red turkey with a forcemeat dressing seasoned with lemon peel, pepper, sweet marjoram and nutmeg. Dusted it with flour and then began basting with butter and drippings as it roasted. Parsnips and carrots pan roasted, too. The mushroom sauce -- no turkey should be eaten without it -- was simply made. A long, slow simmer is the key to bringing out the rich earthy flavors from the few ingredients.

Did Mary Lincoln cook the 8 pound turkey she purchased in January 1859 following these instructions, too? She might not have been able to get mushrooms in January in Springfield, but parsnips and carrots would have been there. All I can say is that we all agreed it was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever. Everything seasonal, local and fresh. This is the way food would have tasted in the 19th century.

Abraham Lincoln concluded his 1863 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation with the hopes that the nation would soon be restored to the "full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union." His words continue to speak to us today.

1845 Mushroom Sauce

16 ounces fresh white button mushrooms
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup light cream
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 teaspoon black pepper -- or to taste.
2 tablespoons soft butter
2 tablespoons flour

The night before you make the sauce, slice about 1/4 of the mushrooms and sprinkle with salt to draw out their juices. The next day, cut off the stems of the remaining mushrooms and slice into quarters. If there are small ones, you may keep them whole. Combine the mushrooms with the cream and milk in a 2-quart saucepan. Stir in the salted mushrooms and the accumulated juices. Cook over very low heat until the mushrooms are tender and the sauce is a light beige color. Mash the butter with a fork and work the flour into it until if forms a paste. Stir this by bits into the mushroom mixture. Continue stirring as the sauce thickens. If sauce is too thick, add a bit more milk. Store leftover sauce in the refrigerator for two or three days. Good with other meats and vegetables.

Abraham Lincoln Thanksgiving: Part 1

Cooks of Crocus Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, offers crop shares of vegetables, fruits and meats from local family farms. When I saw the 19th century Bourbon Red heritage turkey would be available for Thanksgiving, I was delighted. There could be no better way to celebrate Lincoln in the 200th anniversary year of his birth. For while communities had celebrated fall Thanksgivings during much of the 19th century, his 1863 proclamation made it a true national holiday. Lincoln called upon his “ fellow citizens in every part of the United States and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands to set aside the fourth Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving.”

I picked up our 8-pound Bourbon Red Tuesday afternoon. I had picked up my 1845 copy of Miss Leslies’s Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches much earlier. For while the staff at Cooks of Crocus Hill suggest brining these lean birds, I decided to use the cookbook Mary Lincoln owned to come as close as I can to the preparation of her era.

Bird safely stowed in the truck, I stopped at Kowalski’s market to pick up the rest of the fixings: cranberries, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, mushrooms, light cream and a few herbs and seasonings. The bread for the forcemeat stuffing was rising and should be ready to bake when I walked in the door.

Thanksgiving morning has dawned. We’re aiming for a mid-afternoon dinner. Cranberry sauce and forcemeat are ready and vegetables have been peeled and cut. Soon the real cooking will start and I have to admit, I’m a bit nervous. I’ve cooked more turkeys than I care to count. Usually the preparation is close to foolproof. This year there are a lot of different ingredients and techniques to put me to the test.

At least I know the cranberry sauce is good. Check Twitter updates -- http://twitter.com/RaeKatherine.


1845 Cranberry Sauce

1 12- to 16-ounce package fresh cranberries
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar

Wash and sort cranberries. Combine with water in a heavy sauce pan. Cover and cook over low to medium heat until berries pop and the mixture becomes jam-like. Be sure to lift cover and stir from time to time so the sauce does not stick and burn. Add brown sugar and stir until sugar melts into the jam. Remove from heat and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Copyright 2009 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.

Cakes Named for Abraham Lincoln

Nearly every summer evening beginning in 1862, Abraham Lincoln left the White House and rode, either on horseback or in a carriage, up hill out of the city’s miasmal air to the presidential summer cottage. Secretary of War Stanton also occupied a cottage there, on the grounds of the Soldier’s Home, about three miles northeast of the center of Washington. The Lincoln family stayed at the peaceful retreat into the fall before moving furniture and household goods back into the White House for the winter.

On his daily round trip, Lincoln passed poet Walt Whitman’s house, and the two men frequently nodded at in greeting. Whitman described Lincoln in his journal and letters. “June 30, 1863. I noticed him last evening about half-past 6 . . . . He looks more careworn than usual, his face with deep cut lines, seams, and his complexion gray through very dark skin – a curious looking man, very sad.”

The Lincolns were in residence at the White House on April 10, 1865, as the news spread throughout the city of General Lee’s April 8 surrender to General Grant bringing with it the end of the war. A great crowd walked through rain and mud from the Navy Yard to the White House lawn, picking up more and more people and even the Quartermaster’s band along the way. Nearly three thousand in number, they called for the president to come out. He spoke briefly and called upon the band to “play ‘Dixie.’ One of the best tunes I’ve ever heard.” He concluded his appearance calling for three cheers for “General Grant and all under his command” and another three cheers for the Navy.

The following evening Abraham Lincoln made his last public address. Speaking again from the upper windows of the White House, he called for reconciliation with the southern states. “Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these states and the Union.”

Three days later President and Mrs. Lincoln went to a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater. In the middle of the play John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot Abraham Lincoln. He was carried across the street into the home of Mr. William Petersen and laid in a small bedroom on the first floor. At seven thirty-three on the morning of April 15, 1865 Abraham Lincoln’s great heart stopped beating.

Walt Whitman wrote:
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d – and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

People all over the nation mourned Lincoln’s death. Some even hung their homes with black crepe as though a member of their family had died. There were mourning ribbons and badges, portraits, articles and books. Nineteenth century cookbooks brought forth a bakery case full of cakes paying homage to the martyred president. These cakes joined those named for Presidents Washington and Madison, and other political figures on both sides of the Civil War. Many of the published recipes for Lincoln cakes pass along the simple recipe that first appeared in Godey’s Ladies Magazine in 1865: “2 eggs, 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup butter, one of sweet milk, three of flour, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, half teaspoon soda and one of lemon essence.” Others are more like light fruitcakes. This recipe from 1876 is particularly tasty.

Lincoln Cake
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 ounces raisins
4 ounces currants
2 ounces candied citrus peel
4 ounces almonds
1/2 cup flour additional for dredging the fruits
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup brandy
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a large tube pan. Mix the 3 1/2 cups flour, baking soda and spices and set aside. Mix the dried fruits, peel and nuts with 1/2 cup flour and set aside. Cream the butter and brown sugar. Add the eggs and mix well. Add 1/3 of the flour and spice mixture, then the milk, the second third of the flour, the brandy and finally the last third of the flour mixture, stirring well after each addition. Stir in the fruit and nut mixture. Pour batter into pan, filling it about three-quarters full, and bake until a skewer or thin knife stuck in the center comes out clean, approximately one hour and fifteen minutes.

Copyright 2009 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.

The Comfort of Cornbread

When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, 1861, he reached out the southern states considering secession from the union. “We are not enemies, but friends.” He closed his inaugural address with a call to unified patriotism. “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln hoped he was buying time to solve the problems with the rebelling states, but the first thing he received when he entered his office was a letter from Major Anderson at Fort Sumter stating the garrison would run out of supplies in a month or six weeks. Lincoln said later “of all the trials I have had since I came here, none begin to compare with those I had between the inauguration and the [April 13] fall of Fort Sumter.”

He was besieged at all hours by people who wanted to be appointed to offices in the new Republican government, while trying to manage a looming war. He said of those days that he was “like a man so busy renting rooms at one end of his house that he has no time to put out a fire burning in the other.”

It is no wonder that photographs taken between 1861 and 1865 show him becoming more and more thin as his months in office and at war took their toll.

Both Abraham and Mary Lincoln grew up eating cornbread. It was a comfort food for Mary, one of the foods she craved while living some of her widowed years in France. Abraham Lincoln is said to have enjoyed cornbread in the White House as well. This recipe, adapted from 1846, is sturdy. It is all corn, unsweetened and doesn’t rise very much while baking. It is tasty served warm and makes a nice base for any kind of creamed meat dish.

Epicure’s Cornbread
1 egg, separated
2 cups cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon soft butter
3/4 cup boiling water
3/4 cup sour milk or buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Beat the egg white until it forms soft peaks and set aside. Put cornmeal, salt, baking soda and soft butter in a medium mixing bowl. Carefully pour boiling water over all and stir to mix. Combine the sour milk and egg yolk. Add to cornmeal mixture and stir well. Gently fold in the beaten egg white. Spoon batter into a well greased 9-inch round baking pan. Bake until firm in center, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Copyright 2009 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.

Cookies and Lincoln’s Springfield Home

In 1844 successful lawyer Abraham Lincoln moved into the one-and-a-half story home at the corner of 8th and Jackson Streets in Springfield with his wife Mary and their young son, Robert. The family lived there for seventeen years until they left for the White House on February 11, 1861. At that farewell Lincoln spoke eloquently of his years in Illinois and Springfield: “Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried. . . . To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am.”

By all accounts the family was a lively one. The Lincolns added a full second story to the home to accommodate the growing family of boys. Eddie, born in 1846, died just before of his fourth birthday in 1850. Two other boys grew up in Springfield. Willie was born in December 1850 and Tad in April 1853. Neighbors spoke of both Abe and Mary spoiling their sons and of the house being overrun with children and pets. Lincoln pulled the boys in a wagon on the streets of Springfield. He read them stories and tussled with them in the White House. Sadly, only Robert Lincoln survived into adulthood. Willie caught typhoid fever and died in Washington on February 20, 1862. Tad died of tuberculosis in Chicago when he was 17.

Neighbor children recall Mary Lincoln making cookies for them. These simple, easily made cookies from 1851 are tasty and suitable for grabbing by the handful by boys rushing through the kitchen on the way out to play. The National Park Service offers a virtual tour of the Lincoln’s Springfield house: http://www.nps.gov/liho/index.htm

Basic 1851 Cookies
1/3 cup butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 2/3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup milk
2/3 cup chopped nuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix well. Stir in half the flour and the baking soda. Mix until smooth. Gently stir in the milk and when completely blended, add remaining flour. Stir in the nuts, if desired. Drop by teaspoons on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake until tops are a golden brown, 8 to 12 minutes. Cookies puff up while baking and sink a bit as they cool. Yield: about 5 dozen 1 1/2-inch cookies.

Copyright 2009 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.

Mary Todd’s Courting Cake

Mary Todd moved to Springfield, Illinois in October 1839 from Lexington, Kentucky. Two months shy of her twenty-first birthday, Mary was starting a new life in the home of her married sister, and, just maybe, looking for a husband among the politicians, lawyers and strivers in the newly designated state capital. Abraham Lincoln settled in Springfield two and a half years earlier. He arrived in the town of 1,500 in April 1837 riding a horse borrowed from a New Salem friend. He was 28 years old, a lawyer in practice with John Todd Stuart, Mary Todd’s cousin, and a member of the Illinois State Legislature. By the time Mary Todd arrived in town the population had increased to nearly 2,500. The Stuart & Lincoln law practice was busy and he spent his free time in a variety of activities. Lincoln presented serious lectures to the Young Men’s Lyceum. He went fishing in the streams surrounding Springfield with friends and their sons and he escorting their daughters and sisters to concerts, plays and other social events about town. Lincoln encountered Mary Todd at a cotillion in December 1839. “Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way,” he said asking for a dance. After the evening Mary remarked to a family member. “And he certainly did.”

Todd family tradition suggests Mary made an almond cake similar to this one during their courtship and after they were married. Lincoln is said to have called it “the best cake I ever ate.” There are several versions of this white almond cake. I based my adaptation on an 1828 recipe that said to allow two days to make the cake as the almonds need to be blanched, peeled and pounded into a powder the day before baking. With modern kitchen equipment and ingredients, this cake is ready in an hour or so. The original recipe called for both sweet and bitter almonds. The former are the kind we buy today. Poisonous bitter almonds are no longer sold. However, almond extract is made from those nuts, treated to be safe.

French Almond Cake
4 grade A large eggs, separated
1/2 cup granulated sugar, pulverized
3/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
3 ounces blanched slivered almonds, very finely crushed or chopped
to pieces about 1/16th of an inch
1/4 cup flour, sifted three times

Important Tips: There are a few tricks to making this cake successfully. Nineteenth century white sugar came in a compressed cone. Cooks snipped off what they needed with sugar shears and then pulverized it into fine crystals. I put the half cup of granulated sugar in a plastic bag and pulverize it by pressing my rolling pin over it a few times. The resulting finer sugar blends more easily with the egg yolks. The stiffly beaten egg whites provide this cake’s structure. It is lightest when baked until light brown in an ungreased angel food tube cake pan, then turned upside down until it is completely cool. I have baked it in an antique tube pan with fluted sides. To get it out successfully, I greased just the bottom of the pan (top of cake), turned it upside down to cool completely and then gently pressed against the cake, pulling it away from the sides. You can grease and flour the sides of the baking pan and cool the cake right-side up. But the resulting cake, while delicious, will not be nearly as light.

Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large (3 quart) bowl whip the egg whites until they stand in stiff peaks. In a medium (2 quart) mixing bowl beat the egg yolks until they are thick and have turned into a light yellow color. This could take as long as five minutes. With the mixer running, begin adding the sugar about a tablespoon at a time. Continue beating until the sugar is fully incorporated and the batter is thick. Stir in the extracts and then the almonds. Stir in the flour. With a flexible rubber spatula, fold about one third of the beaten egg whites into the egg yolk batter to lighten it up. Then gently fold this lightened batter into the remaining egg whites. Bake until the cake is firm and lightly browned on top, about 25 to 30 minutes.

Copyright 2009 Rae Katherine Eighmey. All rights reserved.