David Scull/The New York Times Joseph Chvatal, a butler at the White House, counts place settings in preparation for the state dinner for Boris Yeltsin hosted by Bill Clinton in 1994.For more than a century and a half, The New York Times has been recording the pleasures and prejudices of the American palate. “The Way We Ate” is a weekly tasting menu of vintage food writing from the Times archives, with an extra installment this week in honor of tonight’s state dinner at the White House.
Woodrow Wilson loved fried chicken. Benjamin Harrison couldn’t get enough Smithfield ham. Lyndon Johnson liked chili, spoonbread and Texas barbecue, and didn’t care who knew it.
Despite our presidents’ homegrown tastes, White House state dinners have almost always been distinctly French in flavor. Even the Kennedys, who made a point of serving American wines on state occasions, never thought to pair them with American cooking.
Blame Thomas Jefferson. Craig Claiborne did, at any rate. In 1961, Claiborne, then the New York Times food editor, pointed a loving finger at the Francophile founding father, who introduced boeuf à la mode and veal estouffade to the White House—and set the tone, described here in an 1884 Times piece, for nearly 200 years of state dinners:
An old time Virginia cook is good enough for every day, and in many respects can’t be beaten, but only a Frenchman can devise the variety and the extensive ornamentation necessary on state occasions.
If a regime of Chateaubriand and Camembert was just fine by Mr. Claiborne, it didn’t sit so well with Julia Child. Eager to see the nation’s burgeoning culinary culture get its due, America’s own French Chef became the first prominent critic of Frenchified state dining.
Writing for The Times in 1977, Ms. Child appealed to the incoming first lady, Rosalynn Carter, to “make White House entertaining more American.” It wouldn’t be too hard, she promised; it was really just a question of “packaging”:
A quiche aux crevettes becomes an open-faced tart of Louisiana shrimp, a filet de boeuf is a prime tenderloin of Texas steer.
Though her tone was lighthearted, her message was clear: Every course of a state dinner is an opportunity to showcase the nation’s edible bounty; don’t let it go to waste.
Since the Carters, state dinner menus have no longer been written in French. But Child wouldn’t truly get her wish until, in a decision that seemed as much health-related as political, the famously fat-averse Clintons banished rich French sauces from the White House.
Tonight, President Obama hosts his first state dinner, honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Our well-established national cuisine no longer needs any particular boost from the White House, freeing the Obamas to devise a menu that is American in a more nuanced sense of the word.
We don’t yet know what will be served, though there have been murmurs of curry. But we do know who will be doing the cooking: the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised, naturalized American, Marcus Samuelsson.
The melting pot, it seems, has finally absorbed the state dinner.
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