Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln may have had a difficult marriage. It's said that they couldn't communicate well. When something went wrong Mary would scream and throw things. Abe would just withdraw and walk away. I wanted to find out more about this marriage. I learned that they had trouble with food too.

Mary had been raised on fancy expensive delicacies. Abe on the other hand had been raised on very he plain inexpensive food. Abe wanted cornbread, mush, bacon, eggs and milk. Honey was a delicacy for him. When Mary set out food such as "Aspic of Tongue, Pate de Foie Gras, Turkey stuffed with Truffles, and all sorts of wild game, such as venison, pheasant, or canvasback duck" Abe would probably just pick at his food. Learn more about what went wrong. The food disagreements were probably a side-effect of bad communication and lack of compromise in their marriage.


Ryan and I had our very first disagreement as newlyweds about food. One of us wanted canned corn, while the other wanted frozen corn. That disagreement was solved long ago when I developed an allergy to a preservative in canned food. Today we eat corn-on-the-cob or frozen corn.

In our kitchen now there are onions which I bought just to make Ryan happy. There is fresh broccoli Ryan bought to make my favorite dish, Beef with Broccoli. And I just hastily cooked up the last of the potatoes, because we always disagree on how to store and wash them. So, I guess our food represents our marriage. Mostly we try to please each other, but we definitely have our disagreements.

So, does the food in your house represent compromises, tolerance or problems between husband and wife?


Information about the food of Abraham and Mary was taken from The Food Timeline . Also from ---The Presidents' Cookbook, Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks [Funk & Wagnall's:New York] 1968 (p. 236-7).

Tiny Thoughts

 "Marriage is a gift from God to us, the quality of our marriage is our gift to God." Elder Clayton