Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen (31 page)

MUSHROOM SAUCE

 

I had never considered mushroom sauce as part of my Thanksgiving dinner, but one taste of this deliciously mellow sauce put it at the top of my traditional menu. Steeping the mushrooms in a bit of salt overnight yields a superb concentration of mushroom flavor
.

16 ounces fresh white button mushrooms

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup light cream

½ cup nonfat milk

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

2 tablespoons soft butter

2 tablespoons flour

The night before you make the sauce, slice about one-quarter of the mushrooms and sprinkle with salt to draw out their juices.

The next day, cut off and discard the stems of the remaining mushrooms and slice the caps into quarters. If there are small ones, you may keep them whole. Combine the mushrooms with the cream and milk in a medium 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. Add the black pepper. Mash the butter with a fork and work the flour into it until it forms a paste. Stir this bit by bit 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 2 to 3 days. Good with other meats and vegetables.

Makes about 1 ½ cups

ADAPTED FROM “MUSHROOM SAUCE,” MISS ELIZA LESLIE,
DIRECTIONS FOR COOKERY IN ITS VARIOUS BRANCHES
, 1845

SOUSED OR BARBECUED PIGS “FEET”

 

“Soused” is slang
for having consumed too much alcohol. In this case, simmering ribs in the highly seasoned wine sauce brings forth a wonderfully flavored meat. If you would like to give the ribs a traditional barbecue glazed look, a quick brush with honey and a few minutes under the broiler or on the grill will do the trick, but any additional sauce will overpower the meats. The leftover cooking liquid will nearly solidify when cold. In a Springfield back pantry, this aspic-like sauce would keep the meat shielded from drying air
.

5 pounds
pork spareribs

4 cups white wine

2 cups water

2 bay leaves

½ teaspoon
each
ground cloves, mace, coriander, and ginger

1 teaspoon
each
dried marjoram and thyme

Put the spareribs in a large pot with a lid. Combine the remaining ingredients and pour over the ribs. Simmer, covered, until tender. Or bake in a covered roasting pan in a preheated 300°F oven. A regular rack of ribs, cut into single rib sections, will be tender in about 45 minutes to an hour. Meatier “country style” ribs will take much longer, perhaps as long as 2 to 3 hours.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

ADAPTED FROM “PIGS FEET AND EARS, SOUSED,” MISS ELIZA LESLIE,
DIRECTIONS FOR COOKERY IN ITS VARIOUS BRANCHES
, 1845.

IRISH STEW, GERMAN BEEF, AND OYSTERS

D
uring the decade of the 1850s, Springfield, Illinois, grew to become a complex crossroads of transportation, commerce, politics, and influence.

Springfield benefited from the intersection of two newly constructed
railway
lines, completed by 1854. On these rail lines raw materials, farm produce, and finished goods traveled between surrounding country and cities to the east, south, and north. The
Great Western of Illinois headed to Toledo and from there connected to the urban capitals of the East Coast. The
Chicago, Alton, and
St. Louis Railway allowed a vital commercial linkage between the Gulf of Mexico and Chicago. Goods traveled up the
Mississippi River and were put on the train at St. Louis. From the north they came on rail from Chicago and the Great Lakes.

The town crowded with newcomers as people moved in to take advantage of the trade-created opportunities. Economic conditions improved as Springfield grew from a town into a city. The latest national newspapers and magazines brought current fashions and happenings into Springfield living rooms. These midwesterners could enjoy
foods from Europe and the Caribbean, and even spices from the Far East.

Information arrived with the immediacy of clacking
telegraph keys. Telegraph lines were strung in 1849, bringing Springfield nearly immediate access to events. Lincoln's friend
David Davis
described the impact on the community: “The wonder workings of the Telegraph are past comprehension. The wires are in communication from this place direct with
Phild [Philadelphia] & New York, and two or three hours after anything is done in those cities, it is known here.”

The decade was critically important for Abraham
Lincoln. He returned from his term in Congress in 1849 and began building his successful
law practice. In just eleven years he would be heading back to Washington, D.C., to lead the nation through its most difficult challenges. Hundreds of authors have written thousands of pages explaining, defining, striving to capture the “real Lincoln.” I decided to see where his words would lead me and what clues I could find to discover how the Indiana and Illinois Lincoln, seemingly removed from the power base of the nation, became the Mount Rushmore Lincoln.

I didn't find the answer, but I did come to an insight—a perspective I'd never realized. The more I read, the more convinced I became that the five years from
1854 to 1859 were pivotal for Lincoln, for the Union, and for the people of Springfield. And part of the story could be told through the food folks in Springfield ate, revealing a crossroads of cuisine feeding a complex society rooted in traditions, open to innovation, and influenced by non-midwestern opportunities.

In a nutshell, in 1854 the United States reached a political crossroads. Illinois senator
Stephen A.
Douglas sponsored a bill essentially overturning the
Ordinance of 1787 and 1820
Missouri Compromise, which had limited
slavery to Southern states. Douglas's bill established that new states entering the Union could, if their citizens wanted, become slaveholding states. The bill was passed by Congress as the
Kansas-Nebraska Act and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30, 1854.

Lincoln and Douglas, arguably the men who were to become the nation's two most influential speakers on the topic, gave a series of speeches around Illinois that fall. Although the pretext was campaigning in the congressional election—Lincoln to reelect Congressman Richard Yates; Douglas to elect Thomas Harris—the real debate was the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Lincoln gave at least nine major addresses between August 26 and November 1, 1854. Three of them were, in effect, joint appearances with Stephen Douglas. The audiences were very large, sometimes in the thousands. On October 16 in Peoria, Douglas spoke first for two or three hours. Lincoln followed, speaking for the same amount of time, and then Douglas had another hour to answer Lincoln's arguments. The topic was
the role of slavery in the admission of new states to the Union. Douglas defended his position. Lincoln passionately argued against it. Newspaper reports noted the audience participation, cheering points they agreed with and shouting down those they did not.

I was struck by Lincoln's elaboration of his underlying principles. He explained his hatred for the spread of slavery. “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself,” and also because it showed American leaders to be hypocrites: speaking of freedom while allowing slavery and, thus, “losing influence in the world.” He continued that it put “really good men” into a war with the Declaration of Independence as they insisted, “there is no right principle of action but
self-interest
.” The emphasis is Lincoln's.

One of Lincoln's supporting arguments jumped out at me. He demonstrated the real and positive economic impact of freedom as he characterized the settlement of the slave-free Midwest: “No states in the world have ever advanced as rapidly in population, wealth, the arts, and appliances of life and now have such promise of prospective greatness as the states that were born under the
Ordinance of '87.” Lincoln wrote that Douglas's
Nebraska bill set the country “at once in a blaze” and into sectional conflict.

Four years later the men once again faced each other over the issue of slave and free states in the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates for Douglas's senate seat. As he accepted the Republican nomination, Lincoln addressed the extreme risks of Douglas's position. The most-remembered phrase from that speech is
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” but there was much more. Again, Lincoln put Douglas's position into economic terms, suggesting it would set the stage for backward motion, a retreat from all of the progress the United States had made. Following Douglas's logic, Lincoln said, it was even possible that Illinois could become “a slave state” and that slave trade with Africa could be revived.

Lincoln lost the race but valued the successes of the
campaign. He wrote to an associate: “It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could not have had in [any] other way; and though I now slink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”

Lincoln returned to his Springfield
law practice, feeling the pressures of the loss of time and business. He wrote to his advisor and friend
Norman Judd of the cost of the campaign that, “I have been on expenses so long without earning any thing that I am absolutely without money now for even household purchases.” But far from fading from view, he continued writing to political allies and public speaking.

Lincoln returned to the discussion of the economic advantages of free states as he closed his February 1859 lecture on “
Discoveries and Inventions,” saying that a “new country is most favorable—almost necessary—to the emancipation of thought, and the consequent advancement of civilization and the arts … we, here in America,
think
we discover, invent, and improve, faster than any of them.”

The
railroad was a primary and progressive improvement and one that Lincoln had studied for years. In 1832 when he was campaigning to represent his New Salem neighbors in the
Illinois legislature, Lincoln predicted “no other improvement … can equal in utility the rail road. It is a never failing source of communication, between places of business remotely situated from each other.” Now, in the 1850s, Lincoln recognized that this promise had proven true. The railroad “is growing larger and larger, building up new countries with a rapidity never before seen in the history of the world … [promoting] young and rising communities” in the middle of the nation.