The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas

by Adrian Miller Narrated by Ron Butler

Overview

Every US president, from Washington to Obama, has had African Americans cooking in their kitchen-many serving as head chef. But these cooks were not only culinary artists. They also served presidents as personal confidantes, informal policy advisers, civil rights advocates, and family friends. These chefs had a unique perspective, but one that has been largely ignored until now.

Through fascinating research gleaned from cookbooks, historical documents, oral histories, magazines and newspapers, and contemporary interviews from former White House chefs and staffers, as well as photographs of the White House kitchens and dining spaces, James Beard Award-winning culinary historian Adrian Miller tells this complex and thrilling aspect of American history for the first time.

Here are just a few appetizers:

• Find out about the cook who saved President Washington's life by foiling the “Poisoned Pea Plot of 1776.”
• Hear more about the enslaved cook who spent three years learning classical French cooking in order to please the palate of a future president.
• Guess which president loved pig's feet so much that he served them in the White House (probably not who you would suspect).
• Reveal the identity of the cook who grilled steaks on the roof of the White House with President Eisenhower.
• Learn more about the cook whose Jim Crow experiences motivated President Johnson to lobby hard for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Her chili recipe got him in hot water with the general public and led to the “Great Chili Controversy of 1964.”

The President's Kitchen Cabinet provides a groundbreaking, entertaining, and detailed look at these chefs, their intricate personal and professional relationships with the presidents and the first families, their cooking equipment and techniques, and the mouth-watering recipes for which they were celebrated

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

For food history and presidential history buffs alike, both entertaining and illuminating."—Kirkus Reviews



An intriguing glimpse into the inner workings of the White House kitchen and the chefs who have made its wonderful cuisine possible."—Library Journal



Miller opens a door into a fascinating world that few ever think about: the White House kitchens. There, he brings to light a realm shaped by an often-ignored group of African Americans who have nurtured the first families so they could lead a nation."—Booklist



Focuses on material culture, cultural issues, political dynamics, and labor relations, contributing to the study of the development of the culinary professions in the US."—Huffington Post



The time is ripe to explore [this] history, much of it previously untold." —Michael Floreak, Boston Globe



Famous recipes and amusing anecdotes aplenty. . . . A parallel history of the nation's leaders told through the lens of their domestic employees, whose stories are laced with the often difficult themes of race, social change, and career ambitions that helped define — and feed — America itself." —Craig LaBan, Philadelphia Inquirer



Dissects the social and political considerations that saw African-American contributions minimized or outright ignored as they fed the First Family, from George Washington to our first black president, Barack Obama."—Trevor Hughes, USA Today



Dissects the social and political considerations that saw African-American contributions to the White House minimized."—Mailonline.com



Sings the praises of more than one hundred fifty black men and women who cooked for leaders of the free world, beginning in the days of George and Martha."—Family Circle

Library Journal

01/01/2017
James Beard Award winner Miller writes about the black men and women who have worked in presidential food service from the time of George Washington to the Obamas. (See review on p. 120)

Kirkus Reviews

2016-12-08
"The White House kitchen is a workplace, just like any other professional kitchen"—except, of course, that it's much more than that, a subject that food historian Miller (Soul Food, 2013) explores with gusto. In a modest sense, the subtitle of the book is a touch limiting, for his latest is a broad-sweeping history of American culinary culture as interpreted through a long line of presidential chefs and food workers. That lineage is primarily African-American, and so it has always been. As Miller writes, George Washington's head chef was an enslaved man named Hercules, who, by Miller's account, had a temperament and an ego to match the demands of the job—and even to rival his boss, "who had a very bad temper." If the Founder was a grouch, there's no reason why his cook shouldn't be a martinet—successful enough, it happens, to earn an income on the side. Just so, a member of Thomas Jefferson's kitchen staff went on to become a caterer and later a preacher and abolitionist, proof that, yesterday as today, the kitchen is a launching place for many successful ventures outside it. Miller explores the logistics of the White House, with its layers and hierarchies and kitchens for staff as well as the chief executive, of the culinary curiosities surrounding the various presidents (including the difficulty of keeping dairy products on hand when needed, as Richard Nixon would complain). Thanks to Miller's careful research, we know that Jimmy Carter "doesn't especially like green peas," in first lady Rosalynn Carter's careful words, and that his predecessor, Gerald Ford, had a fondness for butter pecan ice cream. More substantial are Miller's notes, sometimes between the lines, on how exposure to African-American persons, their foodways, and their "professional excellence" played a part in lessening the prejudices of the nation's chief officeholders. For food history and presidential history buffs alike, both entertaining and illuminating.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169781120
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	02/20/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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