Teddy Roosevelt's Favorite Fried Chicken Included A Hearty Topping

Who doesn't like fried chicken? The staple of cuisines worldwide is beloved by everyone from foodies like Anthony Bourdain, who couldn't get enough Popeyes, to Rough Riders like Teddy Roosevelt. In each case, they had their specific preferences for how it should be served. Fried chicken smothered in white gravy was Roosevelt's favorite, stemming back to his childhood in New York City.

This favorite dish of America's 26th president was taught to him by his mother, who had specific notions on how it should be prepared. She believed the chicken should be served smothered in gravy, giving more time for the meat to absorb the gravy's flavor. Her son never ate it any other way and became adept at cooking it himself, serving the dish back to his mother to her satisfaction at least once.

While the Germanic-rooted country fried steak might be more popular than its fowl-based cousin, the latter is still worthy of your attention. There are two key steps to making the gravy as flavorful as possible. The first is using the drippings from the fried chicken as the base of the gravy, and the second is to make sure to cook the flour for several minutes after adding it to the butter to make sure you avoid a gravy that tastes like raw flour. Given that the chicken will be served with gravy, double dredging is a great way to ensure the crispiest chicken skin.

Theodore Roosevelt boasted a prodigious appetite and an adventurous palate, at least when it came to enjoying the spoils of his hunts. In 1910 he wrote in a letter, "I toasted slices of elephant's heart on a pronged stick before the fire, and found it was delicious," and he reportedly enjoyed a nice moose dinner with his whole family (via Dublin Gastronomy Symposium). He consumed legendary amounts of coffee with the help of a cup that, according to his son, was "more in nature of a bathtub," a vestige from a childhood of being served coffee and cigars as a remedy for asthma attacks (talk about another time), per Smithsonian Magazine. 

A menu from Roosevelt's tour through the Northwest in 1902 sheds more light on his dining habits. Steak, mackerel, and even broiled teal duck adorn the breakfast menu while the lunch and dinners consist of lamb stews, tongue, and different roast meats, alongside an assortment of fruits. He was less formidable in his appetite for alcohol, preferring hu-kwa tea, a black tea from Taiwan also known as lapsang sauchong, and often serving far less wine at meals than his presidential predecessors.