FROM THE FOUNDING TABLE TO YOUR KITCHEN
POTUSPLATETHE PRESIDENTIAL TABLEHISTORY IS SERVED.
Presidents/A nation remade

PRESIDENT 22 & 24 · 1885–1889 · 1893–1897

At the table with
Grover Cleveland.

The twenty-second and twenty-fourth president served two nonconsecutive terms.

Choose a dish ↓
A chop, pickled herring & Swiss cheese — the black-and-white years

THE HISTORICAL TABLE

The dinner Cleveland wished he was having

Family or White House tradition

A letter attributed to Cleveland in presidential culinary histories sets a very specific alternative to formal French dining: pickled herring, Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis’. The remembered preference is for a plain, satisfying combination rather than another procession of rich courses.

That makes a wonderfully direct menu. The chop is cooked hot; the herring and cheese need only good ingredients and small portions. We choose pork for the otherwise unspecified chop. Rye bread and mustard turn the three-part idea into a complete modern supper.

Behind this story

Margaret Brown Klapthor, The First Ladies Cook Book, revised edition (1982), Cleveland chapter. The letter is reported through the later culinary history.